A script to install NixOS on non-NixOS hosts.

NixOS-Infect is so named because of the high likelihood of rendering a system inoperable. Use with extreme caution and preferably only on newly provisioned systems.

This script has successfully been tested on at least the follow hosting providers and plans:

• DigitalOcean
• Hetzner Cloud
• Vultr
• Interserver VPS
• Tencent Cloud Lighthouse
• OVHcloud
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• GalaxyGate
• Cockbox

Should you find that it works on your hoster, feel free to update this README and issue a pull request.

Motivation for this script: nixos-assimilate should supplant this script entirely, if it's ever completed. nixos-in-place was quite broken when I tried it, and also took a pretty janky approach that was substantially more complex than this (although it supported more platforms): it didn't install to root (/nixos instead), left dregs of the old filesystem (almost always unnecessary since starting from a fresh deployment), and most importantly, simply didn't work for me! (old system was being because grub wasnt properly reinstalled)

0. Read and understand the the script
1. Deploy any custom configuration you want on your host
2. Deploy your host as non-Nix Operating System.
3. Deploy an SSH key for the root user.

NB: This step is important. The root user will not have a password when nixos-infect runs to completion. To enable root login, you must have an SSH key configured.

4. run the script with:

  curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-22.05 bash -x

NB: This script wipes out the targeted host's root filesystem when it runs to completion. Any errors halt execution. A failure will leave the system in an inconsistent state, and so it is advised to run with bash -x.

You may utilize Digital Ocean's "user data" mechanism (found in the Web UI or HTTP API), and supply to it the following example yaml stanzas:

#cloud-config

runcmd:
  - curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | PROVIDER=digitalocean NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-22.05 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

• /etc/nixos/{,hardware-}configuration.nix: rudimentary mostly static config
• /etc/nixos/networking.nix: networking settings determined at runtime tweak if no ipv6, different number of adapters, etc.

#cloud-config
write_files:
- path: /etc/nixos/host.nix
  permissions: '0644'
  content: |
    {pkgs, ...}:
    {
      environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vim ];
    }
runcmd:
  - curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | PROVIDER=digitalocean NIXOS_IMPORT=./host.nix NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-22.05 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

To set up a NixOS Vultr server, instantiate an Ubuntu box with the following "Cloud-Init User-Data":

#!/bin/sh

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-22.05 bash

Allow for a few minutes over the usual Ubuntu deployment time for NixOS to download & install itself.

Hetzner cloud works out of the box. When creating a server provide the following script as "User data":

#!/bin/sh

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-22.05 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

Tencent Cloud Lighthouse Hong Kong Region Works out of the box.

Other Regions in China may not work because of the unreliable connection between China and global Internet or GFW.

Before executing the install script, you may need to check your mounts with df -h. By default, OVH adds a relatively short in memory tmpfs mount on the /tmp folder, so the install script runs short in memory and fails. Just execute umount /tmp before launching the install script. Full install process described here

Tested for both VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (x86) and VM.Standard.A1.Flex (AArch64) instances.

[1] The Oracle 7.9 layout has 200Mb for /boot 8G for swap
PR#100 Adopted 8G Swap device

Aliyun ECS tested on ecs.s6-c1m2.large, region cn-shanghai, needs a little bit tweaks:

• replace nix binary cache with tuna mirror (with instructions in the page)

Requred some Xen modules to work out, after that NixOS erected itself without a hinch.