This commit adds the options --build-host and --target-host to nixos-rebuild.
--build-host instructs nixos-rebuild to perform all nix builds on the
specified host (via ssh). Build results are then copied back to the
local machine and used when activating the system.
--build-target instructs nixos-rebuild to activate the configuration
not on the local machine but on the specified remote host. Build
results are copied to the target machine and then activated there (via ssh).
It is possible to combine the usage of --build-host and --target-host,
in which case you can perform the build on one remote machine and deploy
the configuration to another remote machine. The only requirement is that
the build host has a working ssh connection to the target host (if the
target is not local), and that the local machine can connect to both
the target and the build host. Also, your user must be allowed to copy
nix closures between the local machine and the target and host machines.
At no point in time are the configuration sources (the nix files) copied
anywhere. Instead, nix evaluation always happens locally
(with nix-instantiate). The drv-file is then copied and realised remotely
(with nix-store).
As a convenience, if only --target-host is specified, --build-host is
implicitly set to that host too. So if you want to build locally and deploy
remotely you have to explicitly set "--build-host localhost".
To activate (test, boot or switch) you need to have root access to the
target host. You can specify this by "--target-host root@myhost".
I have tested the obvious scenarios and they are working. Some of the
combinations of --build-host and --target-host and the various actions might
not make much sense, and should maybe be forbidden (like setting a remote
target host when building a VM), and some combinations might not work at all.
I needed to add sdhci_acpi and mmc_block to my initrd modules in order to boot
my Chromebook. Looking under /sys/class/mmc_host/*/device/driver/module will
give us the sdhci_acpi dependency.
This makes the firmware available (or would, if someone switched off
enableAllFirmware). Corresponding kernel module should get auto-loaded.
See #9948. Close#9971.
If nixos-install is run on a machine with `nix.distributedBuilds = true`
the installation will fail at some point like this:
Died at /nix/store/4frhrl31cl7iahlz6vyvysy5dmr6xnh3-nix-1.10/libexec/nix/build-remote.pl line 115, <STDIN> line 1.
This is due to `nix.distributedBuilds` setting
NIX_BUILD_HOOK=/nix/store/.../build-remote.pl in the global environment,
which then gets confused in the minimal chroot created by nixos-install.
To avoid these kinds of issues with build hooks, just disable them in
the chroot.
Avoids this warning when running `nixos-rebuild switch`:
````
building Nix...
building the system configuration...
trace: Obsolete option `services.virtualboxGuest.enable' is used. It was renamed to `virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enable'.
````
This option requests compatibility with older NixOS releases with
respect to stateful data, in cases where new releases have defaults
that might be incompatible with system state of existing NixOS
deployments. For instance, if we change the default version of
PostgreSQL, existing deployments will break if the new version can't
read databases created by the old version.
So for example, setting
system.stateVersion = "15.07";
requests that options like services.postgresql.package use defaults
corresponding to the 15.07 release branch. Note that
nixos-generate-config emits this option. (In the future, NixOps may
set system.stateVersion to the NixOS release in use when the machine
was created.)
See also #7939 for another motivating example.
Passing the chroot flag to nixos-install without arguments should now give you a
Bash shell as intended rather than try an empty path.
This was masked by the user's shell (usually /bin/bash) being defaulted to by
chroot, and being found since their paths used NixOS conventions.
When bootstrapping from other distributions, nixos-install is unable to find
various tools in the chroot since their paths aren't aware of NixOS conventions.
This makes a small change to existing code by specifying nixpkgs/nixos instead
of just nixos when running nix-instantiate in the chroot. I haven't tested this
outside of bootstrapping, but the same specification is used elsewhere in the
code so I don't see why it wouldn't work.
This partially reverts commit 3a4fd0bfc6.
Addresses another concern by @edolstra that users might not want to
update *all* channels. We're now reverting to the old behaviour but
after updating the "nixos" channel, we just check whether the channel
ships with a file called ".update-on-nixos-rebuild" and if it exists, we
update that channel as well.
Other channels than these are not touched anymore.
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@redmoonstudios.org>
Should make it even easier to use custom channels, because whenever the
user does a "nixos-rebuild --upgrade", it will also upgrade possibly
used ("used" as in referenced in configuration.nix) channels besides
"nixos". And if you also ship a channel tied to a particular version of
nixpkgs or even remove the "nixos" channels, you won't run into
unexpected situations where the system is not updating your custom
channels.
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@redmoonstudios.org>
The nixbld group doesn't need read permission, it only needs write and
execute permission.
(cherry picked from commit 066758758e7c0768ff8da51d208cdae0f33b368c)
‘nixos-rebuild dry-activate’ builds the new configuration and then
prints what systemd services would be stopped, restarted etc. if the
configuration were actually activated. This could be extended later to
show other activation actions (like uids being deleted).
To prevent confusion, ‘nixos-rebuild dry-run’ has been renamed to
‘nixos-rebuild dry-build’.
