573

Getting started with the Nix ecosystem

What is this article about?

When I first started to learn how to use NixOS, the Nix package manager, and how to work with the Nix language, I was overwhelmed. While it did not take me too long to (sort of) get into it, it was not the most pleasant experience. I would say that there is not really a single source of truth, like Arch Linux users have with the ArchWiki, where you can basically look up everything. Instead, the information is spread across many different sources, which can make it difficult for beginners to find out how to do what they want to do.

The "modern nix CLI", also known as "nix3 cli", is another thing that can cause confusion when you are just starting your nix journey. There are some commands that look almost exactly the same, such as nix shell compared to nix-shell or nix-build compa

573

i. e. (PR, howto test PR, upstream maintainer hint and code occurrences):

• NixOS/nixpkgs#305285
• NixOS/nixpkgs#305285 (comment)
• NixOS/nixpkgs#305285 (comment)

• https://github.com/nix-community/nixd/blob/dc0164e0df37e5d06bda61b6fb2ca16089d5f838/default.nix#L69
• https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/305285/files#diff-969ba1739d6853b40d4ebbf375e7a7811884d4aa2efdabbc516235118ab84d82R78

tl;dr replace meson test --print-errorlogs server regression/nix-ast-dump by meson test --print-errorlogs unit/libnixf/Basic unit/libnixf/Parse unit/libnixt in the PR state back then.

573

$ nix run github:guibou/nixGL#nixGLIntel -- nix shell .#deltatouch

573

i. e. tr ':' '\n' <<< $PATH

573

I. e. " found that nixos-hardware provides a profile to disable Intel GPU." (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/force-using-nvidia-gpu/41729/3)

573

  export PW=... # w/o quotes

qpdf -password=$PW -decrypt /path/to/secured.pdf out.pdf

573

As pointed out here n8henrie/nixos-btrfs-pi#4 (comment) it is possible to debug configuration with i. e.:

nix eval --include nixos-config=./nixos/configuration-sample.nix --argstr system aarch64-linux --file '<nixpkgs/nixos>' config.boot.kernelModules

https://www.google.com/search?q=nix+eval+nixos-config+"error%3A+function+'anonymous+lambda'+called+with+unexpected+argument+'config'"

573

read elsewhere that local discovery was only supported on rooted android devices, so to have my phone device discovered by syncthing on my machine running windows 10 I had at least temporary check "global discovery" on each of the participating devices.

My default configuration though sets them to false (https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#should-i-keep-my-device-ids-secret), temporary meaning manually on demand when I actually want to sync.

At the same time I keep "NAT traversal" (https://forum.syncthing.net/t/enable-nat-traversal-what-does-it-do/13044/4) disabled as it is not needed for my purposes.

573

• tl;dr backblaze does NOT support setting that with their webapp on linux (via desktop app only for windows / mac)
• all solutions (shell script or even restic etc. etc.) all encrypt the data locally before basically just uploading it with the encryption key backblaze provide themselves, which is ok then because the encryption happenend already locally as said. if that is still the best option idk.

573

collecting related issues here:

• https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-cannot-find-my-custom-ssl-certificate/27361