WE SO BACK

Installing on macOS

1. Install Xcode CLI Tools

xcode-select --install

2. Install Nix using the Lix installer

curl -sSf -L https://install.lix.systems/lix | sh -s -- install

4. Clone to ~/.nix and install

git clone https://github.com/santikid/dotnix.git ~/.nix

nix run nix-darwin --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" -- switch --flake ~/.nix#<host>

Installing NixOS

Boot up nixos-minimal installer ISO

Optionally load different keymap (e.g. loadkeys de)

Format and mount disk to /mnt:

# using parted
parted /dev/sda -- mklabel gpt
parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 1MiB 512MiB
parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 512MiB 100%
parted /dev/sda -- name 1 EFI
parted /dev/sda -- name 2 root
parted /dev/sda -- set 1 boot on

# using f/gdisk
# TODO

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

mount /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/disk/by-partlabel/EFI /mnt/boot

(optional for new host) Let NixOS generate hardware config to add as a new host later; skip if using existing machines

nixos-generate-config --root /mnt

Clone this repository to /mnt/.nix:

git clone https://github.com/santikid/dotnix /mnt/.nix

Install Flake

nixos-install --flake /mnt/.nix#<machine>

REBOOT

Installing Asahi NixOS

Installing an Asahi system is similar to regular NixOS, but the formatting has to be done as explained in tpwrules/apple-silicon-support.

# Create root partition
sgdisk /dev/nvme0n1 -n 0:0 -s

# Get number of root partition (code 8300), usually 5
sgdisk /dev/nvme0n1 -p

# Format root partition
mkfs.ext4 -L nixos-root /dev/nvme0n1p5

# Mount partitions
mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/disk/by-partuuid/`cat /proc/device-tree/chosen/asahi,efi-system-partition` /mnt/boot

The EFI partition can be renamed with fatlabel /dev/nvme0n1pX EFI so it can be mounted through /dev/disk/by-label/EFI (both during install and in hardware-configuration.nix).

fatlabel /dev/disk/by-partuuid/`cat /proc/device-tree/chosen/asahi,efi-system-partition` EFI

Both nixos-install and nixos-rebuild have to be ran with the --impure flag since vendor firmware from /boot/asahi has to be accessed. Using a folder inside the repo is not possible without git-adding the firmware so impure builds seem to be the most elegant solution.

When installing, setting TMPDIR to a subdirectory in /mnt is recommended to not run out of disk space.