Installing NixOS on MBP (dual boot)

NixOS_on_MBP.md

Create the installation media

• Download the minimal NixOS ISO

• (on OSX) write the ISO image to an USB drive:

  sudo dd bs=4m if=path/to/nixos-minimal.iso of=/dev/disk2
  

  where /dev/disk2 is the location of the USB media

Resize the OSX partition

Resize the OSX partition. You can do this using the diskutil app.

Boot the USB drive

Boot from the USB drive by holding down the Option key during boot startup tone, until you see boot options. Shooce the option called EFI Boot

Preparing partitions (2)

gdisk -l /dev/sda

This will show you the existing partitions. You would want to update this.

gdisk /dev/sda

• d and delete the new (non-OSX, non-EFI, non-Recovery HD) partition
• n add partition, remaining space, type 8300 Linux LVM)
• w write partition table and exit

Now setup the encrypted LUKS partition and open it (replace sda3 with the partition above):

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda3
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda3 enc-pv

(enc-pv is the name of the encrypted volume in the mapper which will be used)

And now create an LVM group with 2 logical volumes (choose a name for the volume group <vg, e.g. mbp>): (the space you allocate for swap should be at least the same as your RAM size if you want hibernation)

pvcreate /dev/mapper/enc-pv
vgcreate <vg> /dev/mapper/enc-pv
lvcreate -n swap <vg> -L 20G
lvcreate -n root <vg> -l 100%FREE

Proceed with formatting the partitions (do check where the mac boot partition is on the sda disk):

mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/<vg>/root
mkswap -L swap /dev/<vg>/swap

Installation

Mounting

Now mount all the disks and volumes you just created. But not where we said we were going to mount them.

The NixOS installer treats /mnt as the filesystem root for the installation. So instead of mounting to / and /boot as we discussed above, for now we’re going to mount them to /mnt and /mnt/boot instead:

mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Also activate the swap space:

swapon /dev/vg/swap

Configuration

generate config files:

nixos-generate-config --root /mnt

This creates 2 files in /mnt/etc/nixos:

Add this to the configuration.nix:

boot.initrd.luks.devices = [
  {
    name = "root";
    device = "/dev/sda3"; # alternatively, you can do /dev/disk/by-uuid/....... here
    preLVM = true;
  }
];

boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";

networking.networkmanager.enable = true;

wifi

Disable the wpa_supplicant service that’s running, and run it yourself specifying the WPA credentials.

systemctl stop wpa_supplicant.service
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp3s0 -c <(wpa_passphrase 'SSID' 'key')

Install

nixos-install

and then reboot.

If you need to reboot during this process:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda3 enc-pv
lvchange -a y /dev/<vg>/swap
lvchange -a y /dev/<vg>/root
mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/<vg>/swap
systemctl stop wpa_supplicant.service
wpa_supplicant -B -i interface -c <(wpa_passphrase 'SSID' 'key')

After the first boot