Installing

When adding a new host you will need to generate a new host.nix file. The following command copies it to /etc/nixos/ change this to the new host location.

nix run home-manager/master -- init && \
sudo cp ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix /etc/nixos/

You can now use this host.nix file in a new host directory.

Installing the OS on a new host

First download the NixOS ISO from here and flash it to a usb drive.

hint: if you are using linux you can use dd

Then the easiest thing to do is to install git and vim so you can clone the repo and edit things. Do this by adding them to the systemPackages in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix and running the following command.

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

Now you can create a backup of the current NixOS config in case something goes wrong, and because we will need the hardware-configuration.nix

sudo cp -r /etc/nixos ~/nixos-backup

When this is done we can remove the current NixOS config.

sudo rm -rf /etc/nixos

hint: You might need to change the ownership before you can remove it sudo chown -R boyd:users /etc/nixos

Now clone the repo to /etc/nixos

And finally install for the host you want.

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /etc/nixos/#zx-1

When this is done you can move it anywhere since we use home manager. Like the user directory: ~/nixos

Updating

What to do when updating nix

Packages

If you change the configuration run this

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/nixos/#nixos

OS

Run the following in the nixos directory if you want to update to a newer NixOS version

sudo nix flake update

Remove stale versions of the OS using the following command

sudo nix-collect-garbage --delete-older-than 15d