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NixOS

This document contains general notes about NixOS that are independent of my NixOS configuration.

Table of Contents

Misc

  • There is controversy about flakes, rather use channels (e.g. with niv)
  • Prins, P., Suresh, J. and Dolstra, E., "Nix fixes dependency hell on all Linux distributions," Archived December 26, 2008, at the Wayback Machine linux.com, December 22, 2008

niv: Dependency management

niv:

Easy dependency management for Nix projects.

Nix is a very powerful tool for building code and setting up environments. niv complements it by making it easy to describe and update remote dependencies (URLs, GitHub repos, etc). It is a simple, practical alternative to Nix flakes.

https://github.com/nmattia/niv

Niv is an easy dependency management for Nix projects with package pinning.

https://github.com/mikeroyal/NixOS-Guide

Initialize:

niv init

Change the tracking branch of nixpkgs from unstable to 23.05:

niv modify nixpkgs --branch nixos-23.05

Add nixpkgs unstable:

niv add NixOS/nixpkgs -n unstable -b nixpkgs-unstable

Add Home Manager with niv

Home Manager:

[Home Manager] allows declarative configuration of user specific (non-global) packages and dotfiles.

To avoid breaking users' configurations, Home Manager is released in branches corresponding to NixOS releases ( e.g. release-23.05).

Home Manager provides both the channel-based setup and the flake-based one.

https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

Check your channel:

sudo nix-channel --list
#=> nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-23.05

Use the corresponding branch:

niv add nix-community/home-manager -n home-manager -b release-23.05

Add NUR with niv

The Nix User Repository (NUR) is community-driven meta repository for Nix packages.

... packages are built from source and are not reviewed by any Nixpkgs member.

https://github.com/nix-community/NUR

niv add nix-community/NUR -n NUR

Garbage collection

This is automated in base.nix with the nix.gc option.

Run manually for all profiles:

sudo nix-collect-garbage --delete-older-than 14d

Remove leftover EFI entries of removed generations:

sudo /run/current-system/bin/switch-to-configuration boot

System information

nix-info -m

 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.1.51, NixOS, 23.05 (Stoat), 23.05.3242.da5adce0ffaf`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.13.5`
 - channels(root): `"nixos-23.05"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos`

Search for packages

Search for options

Search which package owns a file

# Note how your shell prefix changes.
nix-shell -p nix-index

# Either build the index manually (requires >12GB RAM):
nix-index
# Or download weekly build:
mkdir -p ~/.cache/nix-index/ && wget -q -N https://github.com/nix-community/nix-index-database/releases/latest/download/index-x86_64-linux -O ~/.cache/nix-index/files

# Then search for a file
nix-locate --whole-name '/bash'

List files of package

Example for nano:

find $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A nano --no-link)

Excerpt of the result:

/nix/store/jqvxmx65mfinbsm6db9kmcqmphl44xhp-nano-7.2/share/nano
/nix/store/jqvxmx65mfinbsm6db9kmcqmphl44xhp-nano-7.2/share/nano/asm.nanorc
/nix/store/jqvxmx65mfinbsm6db9kmcqmphl44xhp-nano-7.2/share/nano/autoconf.nanorc

Compare two versions of NixOS system profile

Get latest system profile. This is the profile (usually) being active after booting the system:

ls -1 /nix/var/nix/profiles/ | sort -t'-' -n -k2 | tail -n 1
#=> 120

Compare current with previous profile:

# https://stackoverflow.com/a/36641298
prev="$(ls -1 /nix/var/nix/profiles/ | sort -t'-' -n -k2 | tail -n 2 | head -n 1)"
curr="$(ls -1 /nix/var/nix/profiles/ | sort -t'-' -n -k2 | tail -n 1)"
nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command store diff-closures /nix/var/nix/profiles/"${prev}" /nix/var/nix/profiles/"${curr}"

Compare two arbitrary system profiles:

nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command store diff-closures /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-110-link /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-116-link

cpupower: 6.1.47 → 6.1.51
element-desktop: 1.11.38 → 1.11.40, +2218.9 KiB
element-web: 1.11.38 → 1.11.40, -73.1 KiB
exempi: 2.6.3 → 2.6.4
firefox: 116.0.3 → 117.0
firefox-unwrapped: 116.0.3 → 117.0, -292.6 KiB
gnome-shell-extension-openweather: ∅ → 121, +590.5 KiB
hm_fontconfigconf.d10hmfonts.conf: ∅ → ε
initrd: ∅ → ε
initrd-linux: 6.1.47 → 6.1.51
libcap: 2.68 → 2.69
linux: 6.1.47, 6.1.47-modules → 6.1.51, 6.1.51-modules, -11.8 KiB
meld: ∅ → 3.22.0, +3858.5 KiB
net-snmp: 5.9.3 → 5.9.4
nixos-system-yodaTab: 23.05.3085.2ab91c8d65c0 → 23.05.3242.da5adce0ffaf
openjdk: +19.5 KiB
python3.10-pygobject: +27.0 KiB
stage: ∅ → 1-init.sh, +29.5 KiB
tor-browser-bundle-bin: 12.5.2 → 12.5.3, +18.1 KiB
user: +2885.0 KiB

NixOS configuration debugging

Evaluating parts of the configuration.

First, start nix repl:

nix repl --file '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -I nixos-config=hosts/$(hostname)/configuration.nix

Example: config.home-manager

config.home-manager.
# Press `TAB`
#=> config.home-manager.backupFileExtension  config.home-manager.useUserPackages
#=> config.home-manager.extraSpecialArgs     config.home-manager.users
#=> config.home-manager.sharedModules        config.home-manager.verbose
#=> config.home-manager.useGlobalPkgs

Example: The home variable:

config.home-manager.users.yoda.home

Example: The value of one config option

# The following option is set to `"${config.xdg.dataHome}/.histfile";`
# where `config` is the Home Manager configuration.

config.home-manager.users.yoda.programs.zsh.history.path
#=> "/home/yoda/.local/share/.histfile"

Show Nix configuration

nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command show-config

Evaluate NixOS configuration to JSON

See also section "NixOS Configuration Debugging"!

This evaluates configuration.nix (single module):

NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1 nix-instantiate --strict --json --eval -E '
import ./hosts/yodaTab/configuration.nix  {
  config = {};
  pkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
  lib = import <nixpkgs/lib>;
}
' > evaluated-config.json

Then open evaluated-config.json.

Evaluate expressions

nix-instantiate --eval -E 'with import <nixpkgs> { }; vscode.version'
#=> "1.78.2"

Shell wrapper:

nix-eval() { nix-instantiate --eval -E "with import <nixpkgs> {}; ${*}"; }

Examples:

nix-eval 'vscode.version'
#=> "1.78.2"
nix-eval 'lib.forEach [ 1 2 ] (x: toString x)'
#=> [ "1" "2" ]
nix-eval 'lib.head [1 2]'
#=> 1
nix-eval 'lib.head (
  lib.forEach [ 1 2 ] (x: toString x)
)'
#=> "1"
nix-eval 'lib.head (
  lib.forEach [ {a=1;} {a=2;} ] (x: x.a)
)'
#=> 1
nix-eval 'lib.attrsets.mergeAttrsList [{a=1;} {b=2;}]'
#=> { a = 1; b = 2; }
nix-eval '{ a=1; }.b or 2'
#=> 2
nix-eval '{ a=false; }.a or true'
#=> false
nix-eval '{ a=1; }?a'
#=> true
nix-eval 'with lib.strings; concatMapStrings (x: " -a " + x + " -i 600") ["sda" "sdc"]'
#=> " -a sda -i 600 -a sdc -i 600"

Escape strings

Double-quoted strings (e.g. "foo bar"):

"  -> \"
\  -> \\
${ -> \${

Indented strings (e.g. ''foo bar''):

  • ${ -> ''${
  • '' -> '''

URIs can be written without quotes (e.g. http://example.org/foo.bar).

Run AppImages

# Note how your shell prefix changes.
nix-shell -p appimage-run

# Inside the shell, you can run an AppImage:
appimage-run ~/Downloads/ubports-installer_0.10.0_linux_x86_64.AppImage

Additional resources

Nix Pills

It provides a tutorial introduction into the Nix package manager and Nixpkgs package collection, in the form of short chapters called 'pills'.

Papers

Papers about Nix: