Re: [Nix-dev] Bootstrapping NixOS
Unfortunately it appears as if Rackspace doesn't offer i686 Linux distributions to be run on their Cloud Servers. So I couldn't use the fixed i686 bootstrapping archive. I managed to install NixOS on a Rackspace Cloud Server running Gentoo. I documented the process of installation on the wiki in case anyone is interested in it. However, it is definitely not ideal to install NixOS this way. But it works for now. https://nixos.org/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Rackspace_Cloud_Servers Regards Alexander Foremny 2012/5/10 Marc Weber marco-owe...@gmx.de: Maybe I should just remove the wiki until I find time to host current bootstrapping archives myself. I personally think the community should provide more feedback to get this back into the repositories.. Eelco Dolstra removed it in the bast due to lack of documentation without even asking for improving it. If you have a fast connection bootstrap on your own qemu instance and copy everything up to your server eg using rsync or by creating your own tar. I can also create a new archive for you. i686 is no issue. x86_64 will require longer upload time ( a couple of hours ). http://mawercer.de/~marc/minimal-install-archive.patch is the last patch which still may apply which you can use to create the archive yourself. cd /etc/nixos/nixos; nix-build -A minimal_install_archive ./release.nix If others have a better way for bootstrapping they may talk about their way. Nice about my archive is that it ships with scripts such as run-in-chroot which you may want to use a couple of times for rebuilding the system till you get everything right. Marc Weber ___ nix-dev mailing list nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev ___ nix-dev mailing list nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
Re: [Nix-dev] Bootstrapping NixOS
On 05/13/2012 11:28 AM, Alexander Foremny wrote: Unfortunately it appears as if Rackspace doesn't offer i686 Linux distributions to be run on their Cloud Servers. So I couldn't use the fixed i686 bootstrapping archive. I've never used the bootstrapping archive, but unless it does something particularly strange it should work on x86-64 Linux. Our nixpkgs bootstrap uses 32-bit binaries to bootstrap the toolchain on x86-64, for example. ___ nix-dev mailing list nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
Re: [Nix-dev] Bootstrapping NixOS
Excerpts from Shea Levy's message of Sun May 13 17:53:52 +0200 2012: I've never used the bootstrapping archive, but unless it does something particularly strange it should work on x86-64 Linux. For those who don't know what the bootstrapping archive is/was: Its a 50 to 100MB big file which contains - a short guide how to use it - a script setting up chroot - a minimal nix store containing all tools required to setup the system. Thus the nix system, perl, glibc, curl openssl and not much more. - a modified version of nixos-install (separating the chroot from the installing procedure) Now it looks like this is *my* way to install nixos fast (requiring minimal tools) - and it looks like people are both: - smart enough - willing to spend the time to find their own ways, as in this case (https://nixos.org/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Rackspace_Cloud_Servers repeating url) Why does requiring my version matter to me? No additional more uncommon tools such as unsquashfs are required. Its easy to prepare and upload because its small. Commonly used chroot things stuff such as - for fn in dev proc sys; do mount --bind /$fn host/fn; done - bind mounting the host store (if it exists) so that binaries can be reused are all put into a single script run-in-chroot which you can use this way: run-in-chroot /bin/sh or run-in-chroot nixos-rebuild $OPTS etc. I personally find its very easy to understand what's going on. I addition to that it knows how to checkout nixos/nixpkgs from git/svn (depends on your preference) etc. So yes - everything can be done manually .. but I feel it takes more time. Of course fetching an iso is no issue on any server. Anyway: task solved - so let's close this thread for now. Marc Weber ___ nix-dev mailing list nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
Re: [Nix-dev] Bootstrapping NixOS
Maybe I should just remove the wiki until I find time to host current bootstrapping archives myself. I personally think the community should provide more feedback to get this back into the repositories.. Eelco Dolstra removed it in the bast due to lack of documentation without even asking for improving it. If you have a fast connection bootstrap on your own qemu instance and copy everything up to your server eg using rsync or by creating your own tar. I can also create a new archive for you. i686 is no issue. x86_64 will require longer upload time ( a couple of hours ). http://mawercer.de/~marc/minimal-install-archive.patch is the last patch which still may apply which you can use to create the archive yourself. cd /etc/nixos/nixos; nix-build -A minimal_install_archive ./release.nix If others have a better way for bootstrapping they may talk about their way. Nice about my archive is that it ships with scripts such as run-in-chroot which you may want to use a couple of times for rebuilding the system till you get everything right. Marc Weber ___ nix-dev mailing list nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
