My NixOS configuration.

Prerequisite for creating a NixOS instance in VirtualBox using this config:

• Create a VM with your desired settings. Remember to set the desired number of CPU cores. Set the graphics controller in the display settings to VMSVGA.
• Add the virtual disk image file contained in the Apricorn key to the VM as a virtual hard drive. Reference it by label in configuration.nix. It does not work to add the Apricon key as a USB device. NixOS is not able to see it when it is added that way.
• Use the instructions for a BIOS system.
• Use the virtualbox branch of this code as opposed to the master branch

Steps for creating a NixOS instance on a VirtualBox VM or bare metal PC:

• Download a NixOS installer ISO image. Boot the machine into it.
• Use lsblk to find the medium you will install to.
• Create a single partition in the installation target medium (for legacy BIOS) or two partitions including a 512MB FAT32 boot partition (for UEFI).
• For UEFI:

sudo parted $medium -- mklabel gpt
sudo parted $medium -- mkpart primary 512MiB 100%
sudo parted $medium -- mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 512MiB
sudo parted $medium -- set 2 boot on
sudo mkfs.fat -F 32 -n boot $mediumPartition2

• For BIOS:

sudo fdisk $medium
p
d # repeat for each partition
n
# accept all defaults to make a new partition taking up all the free space
w
sudo mkfs.ext4 $mediumPartition

• To set up encryption on the main partition and map the decrypted partition to a device:

sudo cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat $mediumPartition1
[answer yes to prompt]
[set password]
sudo cryptsetup -y -v luksOpen $mediumPartition1 foo
[enter password]
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/foo

• Mount the installation target medium on /mnt: mount /dev/mapper/foo /mnt
• For UEFI, sudo mkdir /mnt/boot and mount the boot partition $mediumPartition2 on /mnt/boot.
• Connect to wifi if needed. Use ifconfig to find the interface:

wpa_passphrase 'SSID' 'password' >bar
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -i $interface -cbar

• Generate configuration, install, and reboot:

sudo nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
cd /mnt/etc
sudo mv nixos nixos-generated
sudo nix-shell -p git --command "git clone https://github.com/morganthomas/nixos.git"
sudo cp nixos-generated/hardware-configuration.nix nixos
sudo nano nixos/bootloader.nix

For a computer in legacy BIOS (non-UEFI) mode put in bootloader.nix:

{
  boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
  boot.loader.grub.version = 2;
  boot.loader.grub.device = "$medium";
 }

For a computer in UEFI mode put in bootloader.nix:

{
  boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;
  boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
}

Add a hostname in hostname.nix:

{
  networking.hostName = "$hostname";
}

Set the number of build cores in hardware-configuration.nix to equal the number of virtual cores minus one:

{
  nix.buildCores = 7;
}

Then:

 sudo nixos-install
 # set root password
 sudo nixos-enter
 useradd morgan
 passwd morgan
 # set morgan password
 usermod -G wheel,networkmanager,docker morgan
 mkdir /home/morgan
 chown morgan:users /home/morgan
 dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1G count=8
 chmod 600 /swapfile
 mkswap /swapfile
 (ctrl+d to exit chroot)
 sudo shutdown now

After booting and logging in as Morgan:

git clone https://github.com/morganthomas/dotfiles.git

Then move everything (including the dotted files and directories) from the dotfiles folder into your home folder and remove the dotfiles folder. Then reboot. Then open up a terminal and open the hamburger menu and go to Preferences > Profiles > Default, and check "Custom font."

Then:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
sudo mkdir /root/.ssh
sudo rsync --archive --chown=root:root /home/morgan/.ssh /root/.ssh
sudo rsync --archive --chown=root:root /home/morgan/.gitconfig /root/.gitconfig
cd /etc/nixos
sudo git remote remove origin
sudo git remote add origin [email protected]:morganthomas/nixos.git

Add the SSH key to GitHub and:

cd
git remote remove origin
git remote add origin [email protected]:morganthomas/dotfiles.git

It's possible to use an Apricorn key as NixOS installation medium using a command like this to write the image:

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1024

In order for a computer to boot from the Apricorn key, the key must be placed in lock override mode so that it will not lock up during the boot process.

Note that when updating xmobarrc, you may need to killall xmobar before mod+q to see the changes to xmobar.

Finally, set to the unstable channel to get the latest updates:

sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos
sudo nix-channel --update
sudo nixos-rebuild switch