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65
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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-boot-problems">
<title>Boot Problems</title>
<para>If NixOS fails to boot, there are a number of kernel command
line parameters that may help you to identify or fix the issue. You
can add these parameters in the GRUB boot menu by pressing “e” to
modify the selected boot entry and editing the line starting with
<literal>linux</literal>. The following are some useful kernel command
line parameters that are recognised by the NixOS boot scripts or by
systemd:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.shell_on_fail</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Start a root shell if something goes wrong in
stage 1 of the boot process (the initial ramdisk). This is
disabled by default because there is no authentication for the
root shell.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.debug1</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Start an interactive shell in stage 1 before
anything useful has been done. That is, no modules have been
loaded and no file systems have been mounted, except for
<filename>/proc</filename> and
<filename>/sys</filename>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.trace</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Print every shell command executed by the stage 1
and 2 boot scripts.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>single</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Boot into rescue mode (a.k.a. single user mode).
This will cause systemd to start nothing but the unit
<literal>rescue.target</literal>, which runs
<command>sulogin</command> to prompt for the root password and
start a root login shell. Exiting the shell causes the system to
continue with the normal boot process.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>systemd.log_level=debug systemd.log_target=console</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Make systemd very verbose and send log messages to
the console instead of the journal.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
For more parameters recognised by systemd, see
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para>
<para>If no login prompts or X11 login screens appear (e.g. due to
hanging dependencies), you can press Alt+ArrowUp. If you’re lucky,
this will start rescue mode (described above). (Also note that since
most units have a 90-second timeout before systemd gives up on them,
the <command>agetty</command> login prompts should appear eventually
unless something is very wrong.)</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-nix-gc">
<title>Cleaning the Nix Store</title>
<para>Nix has a purely functional model, meaning that packages are
never upgraded in place. Instead new versions of packages end up in a
different location in the Nix store (<filename>/nix/store</filename>).
You should periodically run Nix’s <emphasis>garbage
collector</emphasis> to remove old, unreferenced packages. This is
easy:
<screen>
$ nix-collect-garbage
</screen>
Alternatively, you can use a systemd unit that does the same in the
background:
<screen>
$ systemctl start nix-gc.service
</screen>
You can tell NixOS in <filename>configuration.nix</filename> to run
this unit automatically at certain points in time, for instance, every
night at 03:15:
<programlisting>
nix.gc.automatic = true;
nix.gc.dates = "03:15";
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The commands above do not remove garbage collector roots, such
as old system configurations. Thus they do not remove the ability to
roll back to previous configurations. The following command deletes
old roots, removing the ability to roll back to them:
<screen>
$ nix-collect-garbage -d
</screen>
You can also do this for specific profiles, e.g.
<screen>
$ nix-env -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/eelco/profile --delete-generations old
</screen>
Note that NixOS system configurations are stored in the profile
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/system</filename>.</para>
<para>Another way to reclaim disk space (often as much as 40% of the
size of the Nix store) is to run Nix’s store optimiser, which seeks
out identical files in the store and replaces them with hard links to
a single copy.
<screen>
$ nix-store --optimise
</screen>
Since this command needs to read the entire Nix store, it can take
quite a while to finish.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-container-networking">
<title>Container Networking</title>
<para>When you create a container using <literal>nixos-container
create</literal>, it gets it own private IPv4 address in the range
<literal>10.233.0.0/16</literal>. You can get the container’s IPv4
address as follows:
<screen>
$ nixos-container show-ip foo
10.233.4.2
$ ping -c1 10.233.4.2
64 bytes from 10.233.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.106 ms
</screen>
</para>
<para>Networking is implemented using a pair of virtual Ethernet
devices. The network interface in the container is called
<literal>eth0</literal>, while the matching interface in the host is
called <literal>ve-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>
(e.g., <literal>ve-foo</literal>). The container has its own network
namespace and the <literal>CAP_NET_ADMIN</literal> capability, so it
can perform arbitrary network configuration such as setting up
firewall rules, without affecting or having access to the host’s
network.</para>
<para>By default, containers cannot talk to the outside network. If
you want that, you should set up Network Address Translation (NAT)
rules on the host to rewrite container traffic to use your external
IP address. This can be accomplished using the following configuration
on the host:
<programlisting>
networking.nat.enable = true;
networking.nat.internalInterfaces = ["ve-+"];
networking.nat.externalInterface = "eth0";
</programlisting>
where <literal>eth0</literal> should be replaced with the desired
external interface. Note that <literal>ve-+</literal> is a wildcard
that matches all container interfaces.</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-containers">
<title>Container Management</title>
<para>NixOS allows you to easily run other NixOS instances as
<emphasis>containers</emphasis>. Containers are a light-weight
approach to virtualisation that runs software in the container at the
same speed as in the host system. NixOS containers share the Nix store
of the host, making container creation very efficient.</para>
<warning><para>Currently, NixOS containers are not perfectly isolated
from the host system. This means that a user with root access to the
container can do things that affect the host. So you should not give
container root access to untrusted users.</para></warning>
<para>NixOS containers can be created in two ways: imperatively, using
the command <command>nixos-container</command>, and declaratively, by
specifying them in your <filename>configuration.nix</filename>. The
declarative approach implies that containers get upgraded along with
your host system when you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, which
is often not what you want. By contrast, in the imperative approach,
containers are configured and updated independently from the host
system.</para>
<xi:include href="imperative-containers.xml" />
<xi:include href="declarative-containers.xml" />
<xi:include href="container-networking.xml" />
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-cgroups">
<title>Control Groups</title>
<para>To keep track of the processes in a running system, systemd uses
<emphasis>control groups</emphasis> (cgroups). A control group is a
set of processes used to allocate resources such as CPU, memory or I/O
bandwidth. There can be multiple control group hierarchies, allowing
each kind of resource to be managed independently.</para>
<para>The command <command>systemd-cgls</command> lists all control
groups in the <literal>systemd</literal> hierarchy, which is what
systemd uses to keep track of the processes belonging to each service
or user session:
<screen>
$ systemd-cgls
├─user
│ └─eelco
│ └─c1
│ ├─ 2567 -:0
│ ├─ 2682 kdeinit4: kdeinit4 Running...
│ ├─ <replaceable>...</replaceable>
│ └─10851 sh -c less -R
└─system
├─httpd.service
│ ├─2444 httpd -f /nix/store/3pyacby5cpr55a03qwbnndizpciwq161-httpd.conf -DNO_DETACH
│ └─<replaceable>...</replaceable>
├─dhcpcd.service
│ └─2376 dhcpcd --config /nix/store/f8dif8dsi2yaa70n03xir8r653776ka6-dhcpcd.conf
└─ <replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
Similarly, <command>systemd-cgls cpu</command> shows the cgroups in
the CPU hierarchy, which allows per-cgroup CPU scheduling priorities.
By default, every systemd service gets its own CPU cgroup, while all
user sessions are in the top-level CPU cgroup. This ensures, for
instance, that a thousand run-away processes in the
<literal>httpd.service</literal> cgroup cannot starve the CPU for one
process in the <literal>postgresql.service</literal> cgroup. (By
contrast, it they were in the same cgroup, then the PostgreSQL process
would get 1/1001 of the cgroup’s CPU time.) You can limit a service’s
CPU share in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.CPUShares = 512;
</programlisting>
By default, every cgroup has 1024 CPU shares, so this will halve the
CPU allocation of the <literal>httpd.service</literal> cgroup.</para>
<para>There also is a <literal>memory</literal> hierarchy that
controls memory allocation limits; by default, all processes are in
the top-level cgroup, so any service or session can exhaust all
available memory. Per-cgroup memory limits can be specified in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>; for instance, to limit
<literal>httpd.service</literal> to 512 MiB of RAM (excluding swap)
and 640 MiB of RAM (including swap):
<programlisting>
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.MemoryLimit = "512M";
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.ControlGroupAttribute = [ "memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes 640M" ];
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The command <command>systemd-cgtop</command> shows a
continuously updated list of all cgroups with their CPU and memory
usage.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-declarative-containers">
<title>Declarative Container Specification</title>
<para>You can also specify containers and their configuration in the
host’s <filename>configuration.nix</filename>. For example, the
following specifies that there shall be a container named
<literal>database</literal> running PostgreSQL:
<programlisting>
containers.database =
{ config =
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ services.postgresql.enable = true;
services.postgresql.package = pkgs.postgresql92;
};
};
</programlisting>
If you run <literal>nixos-rebuild switch</literal>, the container will
be built and started. If the container was already running, it will be
updated in place, without rebooting.</para>
<para>By default, declarative containers share the network namespace
of the host, meaning that they can listen on (privileged)
ports. However, they cannot change the network configuration. You can
give a container its own network as follows:
<programlisting>
containers.database =
{ privateNetwork = true;
hostAddress = "192.168.100.10";
localAddress = "192.168.100.11";
};
</programlisting>
This gives the container a private virtual Ethernet interface with IP
address <literal>192.168.100.11</literal>, which is hooked up to a
virtual Ethernet interface on the host with IP address
<literal>192.168.100.10</literal>. (See the next section for details
on container networking.)</para>
<para>To disable the container, just remove it from
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> and run <literal>nixos-rebuild
switch</literal>. Note that this will not delete the root directory of
the container in <literal>/var/lib/containers</literal>.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-imperative-containers">
<title>Imperative Container Management</title>
<para>We’ll cover imperative container management using
<command>nixos-container</command> first. You create a container with
identifier <literal>foo</literal> as follows:
<screen>
$ nixos-container create foo
</screen>
This creates the container’s root directory in
<filename>/var/lib/containers/foo</filename> and a small configuration
file in <filename>/etc/containers/foo.conf</filename>. It also builds
the container’s initial system configuration and stores it in
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-container/foo/system</filename>. You
can modify the initial configuration of the container on the command
line. For instance, to create a container that has
<command>sshd</command> running, with the given public key for
<literal>root</literal>:
<screen>
$ nixos-container create foo --config 'services.openssh.enable = true; \
users.extraUsers.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = ["ssh-dss AAAAB3N…"];'
</screen>
</para>
<para>Creating a container does not start it. To start the container,
run:
<screen>
$ nixos-container start foo
</screen>
This command will return as soon as the container has booted and has
reached <literal>multi-user.target</literal>. On the host, the
container runs within a systemd unit called
<literal>container@<replaceable>container-name</replaceable>.service</literal>.
Thus, if something went wrong, you can get status info using
<command>systemctl</command>:
<screen>
$ systemctl status container@foo
</screen>
</para>
<para>If the container has started succesfully, you can log in as
root using the <command>root-login</command> operation:
<screen>
$ nixos-container root-login foo
[root@foo:~]#
</screen>
Note that only root on the host can do this (since there is no
authentication). You can also get a regular login prompt using the
<command>login</command> operation, which is available to all users on
the host:
<screen>
$ nixos-container login foo
foo login: alice
Password: ***
</screen>
With <command>nixos-container run</command>, you can execute arbitrary
commands in the container:
<screen>
$ nixos-container run foo -- uname -a
Linux foo 3.4.82 #1-NixOS SMP Thu Mar 20 14:44:05 UTC 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
</screen>
</para>
<para>There are several ways to change the configuration of the
container. First, on the host, you can edit
<literal>/var/lib/container/<replaceable>name</replaceable>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</literal>,
and run
<screen>
$ nixos-container update foo
</screen>
This will build and activate the new configuration. You can also
specify a new configuration on the command line:
<screen>
$ nixos-container update foo --config 'services.httpd.enable = true; \
services.httpd.adminAddr = "foo@example.org";'
$ curl http://$(nixos-container show-ip foo)/
&lt;!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">…
</screen>
However, note that this will overwrite the container’s
<filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>.</para>
<para>Alternatively, you can change the configuration from within the
container itself by running <command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>
inside the container. Note that the container by default does not have
a copy of the NixOS channel, so you should run <command>nix-channel
--update</command> first.</para>
<para>Containers can be stopped and started using
<literal>nixos-container stop</literal> and <literal>nixos-container
start</literal>, respectively, or by using
<command>systemctl</command> on the container’s service unit. To
destroy a container, including its file system, do
<screen>
$ nixos-container destroy foo
</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-logging">
<title>Logging</title>
<para>System-wide logging is provided by systemd’s
<emphasis>journal</emphasis>, which subsumes traditional logging
daemons such as syslogd and klogd. Log entries are kept in binary
files in <filename>/var/log/journal/</filename>. The command
<literal>journalctl</literal> allows you to see the contents of the
journal. For example,
<screen>
$ journalctl -b
</screen>
shows all journal entries since the last reboot. (The output of
<command>journalctl</command> is piped into <command>less</command> by
default.) You can use various options and match operators to restrict
output to messages of interest. For instance, to get all messages
from PostgreSQL:
<screen>
$ journalctl -u postgresql.service
-- Logs begin at Mon, 2013-01-07 13:28:01 CET, end at Tue, 2013-01-08 01:09:57 CET. --
...
Jan 07 15:44:14 hagbard postgres[2681]: [2-1] LOG: database system is shut down
-- Reboot --
Jan 07 15:45:10 hagbard postgres[2532]: [1-1] LOG: database system was shut down at 2013-01-07 15:44:14 CET
Jan 07 15:45:13 hagbard postgres[2500]: [1-1] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
</screen>
Or to get all messages since the last reboot that have at least a
“critical” severity level:
<screen>
$ journalctl -b -p crit
Dec 17 21:08:06 mandark sudo[3673]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): auth could not identify password for [alice]
Dec 29 01:30:22 mandark kernel[6131]: [1053513.909444] CPU6: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
</screen>
</para>
<para>The system journal is readable by root and by users in the
<literal>wheel</literal> and <literal>systemd-journal</literal>
groups. All users have a private journal that can be read using
<command>journalctl</command>.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-maintenance-mode">
<title>Maintenance Mode</title>
<para>You can enter rescue mode by running:
<screen>
$ systemctl rescue</screen>
This will eventually give you a single-user root shell. Systemd will
stop (almost) all system services. To get out of maintenance mode,
just exit from the rescue shell.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-nix-network-issues">
<title>Network Problems</title>
<para>Nix uses a so-called <emphasis>binary cache</emphasis> to
optimise building a package from source into downloading it as a
pre-built binary. That is, whenever a command like
<command>nixos-rebuild</command> needs a path in the Nix store, Nix
will try to download that path from the Internet rather than build it
from source. The default binary cache is
<uri>http://cache.nixos.org/</uri>. If this cache is unreachable, Nix
operations may take a long time due to HTTP connection timeouts. You
can disable the use of the binary cache by adding <option>--option
use-binary-caches false</option>, e.g.
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --option use-binary-caches false
</screen>
If you have an alternative binary cache at your disposal, you can use
it instead:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --option binary-caches http://my-cache.example.org/
</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-rebooting">
<title>Rebooting and Shutting Down</title>
<para>The system can be shut down (and automatically powered off) by
doing:
<screen>
$ shutdown
</screen>
This is equivalent to running <command>systemctl
poweroff</command>.</para>
<para>To reboot the system, run
<screen>
$ reboot
</screen>
which is equivalent to <command>systemctl reboot</command>.
Alternatively, you can quickly reboot the system using
<literal>kexec</literal>, which bypasses the BIOS by directly loading
the new kernel into memory:
<screen>
$ systemctl kexec
</screen>
</para>
<para>The machine can be suspended to RAM (if supported) using
<command>systemctl suspend</command>, and suspended to disk using
<command>systemctl hibernate</command>.</para>
<para>These commands can be run by any user who is logged in locally,
i.e. on a virtual console or in X11; otherwise, the user is asked for
authentication.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-rollback">
<title>Rolling Back Configuration Changes</title>
<para>After running <command>nixos-rebuild</command> to switch to a
new configuration, you may find that the new configuration doesn’t
work very well. In that case, there are several ways to return to a
previous configuration.</para>
<para>First, the GRUB boot manager allows you to boot into any
previous configuration that hasn’t been garbage-collected. These
configurations can be found under the GRUB submenu “NixOS - All
configurations”. This is especially useful if the new configuration
fails to boot. After the system has booted, you can make the selected
configuration the default for subsequent boots:
<screen>
$ /run/current-system/bin/switch-to-configuration boot</screen>
</para>
<para>Second, you can switch to the previous configuration in a running
system:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --rollback</screen>
This is equivalent to running:
<screen>
$ /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-<replaceable>N</replaceable>-link/bin/switch-to-configuration switch</screen>
where <replaceable>N</replaceable> is the number of the NixOS system
configuration. To get a list of the available configurations, do:
<screen>
$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-*-link
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 78 Aug 12 13:54 /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-268-link -> /nix/store/202b...-nixos-13.07pre4932_5a676e4-4be1055
</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<part xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-running">
<title>Administration</title>
<partintro>
<para>This chapter describes various aspects of managing a running
NixOS system, such as how to use the <command>systemd</command>
service manager.</para>
</partintro>
<xi:include href="service-mgmt.xml" />
<xi:include href="rebooting.xml" />
<xi:include href="user-sessions.xml" />
<xi:include href="control-groups.xml" />
<xi:include href="logging.xml" />
<xi:include href="cleaning-store.xml" />
<xi:include href="containers.xml" />
<xi:include href="troubleshooting.xml" />
</part>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-systemctl">
<title>Service Management</title>
<para>In NixOS, all system services are started and monitored using
the systemd program. Systemd is the “init” process of the system
(i.e. PID 1), the parent of all other processes. It manages a set of
so-called “units”, which can be things like system services
(programs), but also mount points, swap files, devices, targets
(groups of units) and more. Units can have complex dependencies; for
instance, one unit can require that another unit must be successfully
started before the first unit can be started. When the system boots,
it starts a unit named <literal>default.target</literal>; the
dependencies of this unit cause all system services to be started,
file systems to be mounted, swap files to be activated, and so
on.</para>
<para>The command <command>systemctl</command> is the main way to
interact with <command>systemd</command>. Without any arguments, it
shows the status of active units:
<screen>
$ systemctl
-.mount loaded active mounted /
swapfile.swap loaded active active /swapfile
sshd.service loaded active running SSH Daemon
graphical.target loaded active active Graphical Interface
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
</para>
<para>You can ask for detailed status information about a unit, for
instance, the PostgreSQL database service:
<screen>
$ systemctl status postgresql.service
postgresql.service - PostgreSQL Server
Loaded: loaded (/nix/store/pn3q73mvh75gsrl8w7fdlfk3fq5qm5mw-unit/postgresql.service)
Active: active (running) since Mon, 2013-01-07 15:55:57 CET; 9h ago
Main PID: 2390 (postgres)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/postgresql.service
├─2390 postgres
├─2418 postgres: writer process
├─2419 postgres: wal writer process
├─2420 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
├─2421 postgres: stats collector process
└─2498 postgres: zabbix zabbix [local] idle
Jan 07 15:55:55 hagbard postgres[2394]: [1-1] LOG: database system was shut down at 2013-01-07 15:55:05 CET
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard postgres[2390]: [1-1] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard postgres[2420]: [1-1] LOG: autovacuum launcher started
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard systemd[1]: Started PostgreSQL Server.
</screen>
Note that this shows the status of the unit (active and running), all
the processes belonging to the service, as well as the most recent log
messages from the service.
</para>
<para>Units can be stopped, started or restarted:
<screen>
$ systemctl stop postgresql.service
$ systemctl start postgresql.service
$ systemctl restart postgresql.service
</screen>
These operations are synchronous: they wait until the service has
finished starting or stopping (or has failed). Starting a unit will
cause the dependencies of that unit to be started as well (if
necessary).</para>
<!-- - cgroups: each service and user session is a cgroup
- cgroup resource management -->
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-nix-store-corruption">
<title>Nix Store Corruption</title>
<para>After a system crash, it’s possible for files in the Nix store
to become corrupted. (For instance, the Ext4 file system has the
tendency to replace un-synced files with zero bytes.) NixOS tries
hard to prevent this from happening: it performs a
<command>sync</command> before switching to a new configuration, and
Nix’s database is fully transactional. If corruption still occurs,
you may be able to fix it automatically.</para>
<para>If the corruption is in a path in the closure of the NixOS
system configuration, you can fix it by doing
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --repair
</screen>
This will cause Nix to check every path in the closure, and if its
cryptographic hash differs from the hash recorded in Nix’s database,
the path is rebuilt or redownloaded.</para>
<para>You can also scan the entire Nix store for corrupt paths:
<screen>
$ nix-store --verify --check-contents --repair
</screen>
Any corrupt paths will be redownloaded if they’re available in a
binary cache; otherwise, they cannot be repaired.</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-troubleshooting">
<title>Troubleshooting</title>
<para>This chapter describes solutions to common problems you might
encounter when you manage your NixOS system.</para>
<xi:include href="boot-problems.xml" />
<xi:include href="maintenance-mode.xml" />
<xi:include href="rollback.xml" />
<xi:include href="store-corruption.xml" />
<xi:include href="network-problems.xml" />
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-user-sessions">
<title>User Sessions</title>
<para>Systemd keeps track of all users who are logged into the system
(e.g. on a virtual console or remotely via SSH). The command
<command>loginctl</command> allows querying and manipulating user
sessions. For instance, to list all user sessions:
<screen>
$ loginctl
SESSION UID USER SEAT
c1 500 eelco seat0
c3 0 root seat0
c4 500 alice
</screen>
This shows that two users are logged in locally, while another is
logged in remotely. (“Seats” are essentially the combinations of
displays and input devices attached to the system; usually, there is
only one seat.) To get information about a session:
<screen>
$ loginctl session-status c3
c3 - root (0)
Since: Tue, 2013-01-08 01:17:56 CET; 4min 42s ago
Leader: 2536 (login)
Seat: seat0; vc3
TTY: /dev/tty3
Service: login; type tty; class user
State: online
CGroup: name=systemd:/user/root/c3
├─ 2536 /nix/store/10mn4xip9n7y9bxqwnsx7xwx2v2g34xn-shadow-4.1.5.1/bin/login --
├─10339 -bash
└─10355 w3m nixos.org
</screen>
This shows that the user is logged in on virtual console 3. It also
lists the processes belonging to this session. Since systemd keeps
track of this, you can terminate a session in a way that ensures that
all the session’s processes are gone:
<screen>
$ loginctl terminate-session c3
</screen>
</para>
</chapter>

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42
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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-luks-file-systems">
<title>LUKS-Encrypted File Systems</title>
<para>NixOS supports file systems that are encrypted using
<emphasis>LUKS</emphasis> (Linux Unified Key Setup). For example,
here is how you create an encrypted Ext4 file system on the device
<filename>/dev/sda2</filename>:
<screen>
$ cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda2
WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/sda2 irrevocably.
Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): YES
Enter LUKS passphrase: ***
Verify passphrase: ***
$ cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 crypted
Enter passphrase for /dev/sda2: ***
$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/crypted
</screen>
To ensure that this file system is automatically mounted at boot time
as <filename>/</filename>, add the following to
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
boot.initrd.luks.devices = [ { device = "/dev/sda2"; name = "crypted"; } ];
fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/mapper/crypted";
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-module-abstractions">
<title>Abstractions</title>
<para>If you find yourself repeating yourself over and over, it’s time
to abstract. Take, for instance, this Apache HTTP Server configuration:
<programlisting>
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
[ { hostName = "example.org";
documentRoot = "/webroot";
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
enableUserDir = true;
}
{ hostName = "example.org";
documentRoot = "/webroot";
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
enableUserDir = true;
enableSSL = true;
sslServerCert = "/root/ssl-example-org.crt";
sslServerKey = "/root/ssl-example-org.key";
}
];
}
</programlisting>
It defines two virtual hosts with nearly identical configuration; the
only difference is that the second one has SSL enabled. To prevent
this duplication, we can use a <literal>let</literal>:
<programlisting>
let
exampleOrgCommon =
{ hostName = "example.org";
documentRoot = "/webroot";
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
enableUserDir = true;
};
in
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
[ exampleOrgCommon
(exampleOrgCommon // {
enableSSL = true;
sslServerCert = "/root/ssl-example-org.crt";
sslServerKey = "/root/ssl-example-org.key";
})
];
}
</programlisting>
The <literal>let exampleOrgCommon =
<replaceable>...</replaceable></literal> defines a variable named
<literal>exampleOrgCommon</literal>. The <literal>//</literal>
operator merges two attribute sets, so the configuration of the second
virtual host is the set <literal>exampleOrgCommon</literal> extended
with the SSL options.</para>
<para>You can write a <literal>let</literal> wherever an expression is
allowed. Thus, you also could have written:
<programlisting>
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
let exampleOrgCommon = <replaceable>...</replaceable>; in
[ exampleOrgCommon
(exampleOrgCommon // { <replaceable>...</replaceable> })
];
}
</programlisting>
but not <literal>{ let exampleOrgCommon =
<replaceable>...</replaceable>; in <replaceable>...</replaceable>;
}</literal> since attributes (as opposed to attribute values) are not
expressions.</para>
<para><emphasis>Functions</emphasis> provide another method of
abstraction. For instance, suppose that we want to generate lots of
different virtual hosts, all with identical configuration except for
the host name. This can be done as follows:
<programlisting>
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
let
makeVirtualHost = name:
{ hostName = name;
documentRoot = "/webroot";
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
};
in
[ (makeVirtualHost "example.org")
(makeVirtualHost "example.com")
(makeVirtualHost "example.gov")
(makeVirtualHost "example.nl")
];
}
</programlisting>
Here, <varname>makeVirtualHost</varname> is a function that takes a
single argument <literal>name</literal> and returns the configuration
for a virtual host. That function is then called for several names to
produce the list of virtual host configurations.</para>
<para>We can further improve on this by using the function
<varname>map</varname>, which applies another function to every
element in a list:
<programlisting>
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
let
makeVirtualHost = <replaceable>...</replaceable>;
in map makeVirtualHost
[ "example.org" "example.com" "example.gov" "example.nl" ];
}
</programlisting>
(The function <literal>map</literal> is called a
<emphasis>higher-order function</emphasis> because it takes another
function as an argument.)</para>
<para>What if you need more than one argument, for instance, if we
want to use a different <literal>documentRoot</literal> for each
virtual host? Then we can make <varname>makeVirtualHost</varname> a
function that takes a <emphasis>set</emphasis> as its argument, like this:
<programlisting>
{
services.httpd.virtualHosts =
let
makeVirtualHost = { name, root }:
{ hostName = name;
documentRoot = root;
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
};
in map makeVirtualHost
[ { name = "example.org"; root = "/sites/example.org"; }
{ name = "example.com"; root = "/sites/example.com"; }
{ name = "example.gov"; root = "/sites/example.gov"; }
{ name = "example.nl"; root = "/sites/example.nl"; }
];
}
</programlisting>
But in this case (where every root is a subdirectory of
<filename>/sites</filename> named after the virtual host), it would
have been shorter to define <varname>makeVirtualHost</varname> as
<programlisting>
makeVirtualHost = name:
{ hostName = name;
documentRoot = "/sites/${name}";
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
};
</programlisting>
Here, the construct
<literal>${<replaceable>...</replaceable>}</literal> allows the result
of an expression to be spliced into a string.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ad-hoc-network-config">
<title>Ad-Hoc Configuration</title>
<para>You can use <option>networking.localCommands</option> to specify
shell commands to be run at the end of
<literal>network-setup.service</literal>. This is useful for doing
network configuration not covered by the existing NixOS modules. For
instance, to statically configure an IPv6 address:
<programlisting>
networking.localCommands =
''
ip -6 addr add 2001:610:685:1::1/64 dev eth0
'';
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-ad-hoc-packages">
<title>Ad-Hoc Package Management</title>
<para>With the command <command>nix-env</command>, you can install and
uninstall packages from the command line. For instance, to install
Mozilla Thunderbird:
<screen>
$ nix-env -iA nixos.pkgs.thunderbird</screen>
If you invoke this as root, the package is installed in the Nix
profile <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default</filename> and visible
to all users of the system; otherwise, the package ends up in
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/<replaceable>username</replaceable>/profile</filename>
and is not visible to other users. The <option>-A</option> flag
specifies the package by its attribute name; without it, the package
is installed by matching against its package name
(e.g. <literal>thunderbird</literal>). The latter is slower because
it requires matching against all available Nix packages, and is
ambiguous if there are multiple matching packages.</para>
<para>Packages come from the NixOS channel. You typically upgrade a
package by updating to the latest version of the NixOS channel:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --update nixos
</screen>
and then running <literal>nix-env -i</literal> again. Other packages
in the profile are <emphasis>not</emphasis> affected; this is the
crucial difference with the declarative style of package management,
where running <command>nixos-rebuild switch</command> causes all
packages to be updated to their current versions in the NixOS channel.
You can however upgrade all packages for which there is a newer
version by doing:
<screen>
$ nix-env -u '*'
</screen>
</para>
<para>A package can be uninstalled using the <option>-e</option>
flag:
<screen>
$ nix-env -e thunderbird
</screen>
</para>
<para>Finally, you can roll back an undesirable
<command>nix-env</command> action:
<screen>
$ nix-env --rollback
</screen>
</para>
<para><command>nix-env</command> has many more flags. For details,
see the
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>nix-env</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
manpage or the Nix manual.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-custom-packages">
<title>Adding Custom Packages</title>
<para>It’s possible that a package you need is not available in NixOS.
In that case, you can do two things. First, you can clone the Nixpkgs
repository, add the package to your clone, and (optionally) submit a
patch or pull request to have it accepted into the main Nixpkgs
repository. This is described in detail in the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual">Nixpkgs manual</link>.
In short, you clone Nixpkgs:
<screen>
$ git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git
$ cd nixpkgs
</screen>
Then you write and test the package as described in the Nixpkgs
manual. Finally, you add it to
<literal>environment.systemPackages</literal>, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.my-package ];
</programlisting>
and you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, specifying your own
Nixpkgs tree:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs</screen>
</para>
<para>The second possibility is to add the package outside of the
Nixpkgs tree. For instance, here is how you specify a build of the
<link xlink:href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/">GNU Hello</link>
package directly in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
let
my-hello = with pkgs; stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
};
in
[ my-hello ];
</programlisting>
Of course, you can also move the definition of
<literal>my-hello</literal> into a separate Nix expression, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ (import ./my-hello.nix) ];
</programlisting>
where <filename>my-hello.nix</filename> contains:
<programlisting>
with import &lt;nixpkgs> {}; # bring all of Nixpkgs into scope
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
}
</programlisting>
This allows testing the package easily:
<screen>
$ nix-build my-hello.nix
$ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!
</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-configuration-file">
<title>NixOS Configuration File</title>
<para>The NixOS configuration file generally looks like this:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ <replaceable>option definitions</replaceable>
}
</programlisting>
The first line (<literal>{ config, pkgs, ... }:</literal>) denotes
that this is actually a function that takes at least the two arguments
<varname>config</varname> and <varname>pkgs</varname>. (These are
explained later.) The function returns a <emphasis>set</emphasis> of
option definitions (<literal>{ <replaceable>...</replaceable> }</literal>). These definitions have the
form <literal><replaceable>name</replaceable> =
<replaceable>value</replaceable></literal>, where
<replaceable>name</replaceable> is the name of an option and
<replaceable>value</replaceable> is its value. For example,
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ services.httpd.enable = true;
services.httpd.adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
services.httpd.documentRoot = "/webroot";
}
</programlisting>
defines a configuration with three option definitions that together
enable the Apache HTTP Server with <filename>/webroot</filename> as
the document root.</para>
<para>Sets can be nested, and in fact dots in option names are
shorthand for defining a set containing another set. For instance,
<option>services.httpd.enable</option> defines a set named
<varname>services</varname> that contains a set named
<varname>httpd</varname>, which in turn contains an option definition
named <varname>enable</varname> with value <literal>true</literal>.
This means that the example above can also be written as:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ services = {
httpd = {
enable = true;
adminAddr = "alice@example.org";
documentRoot = "/webroot";
};
};
}
</programlisting>
which may be more convenient if you have lots of option definitions
that share the same prefix (such as
<literal>services.httpd</literal>).</para>
<para>NixOS checks your option definitions for correctness. For
instance, if you try to define an option that doesn’t exist (that is,
doesn’t have a corresponding <emphasis>option declaration</emphasis>),
<command>nixos-rebuild</command> will give an error like:
<screen>
The option `services.httpd.enabl' defined in `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix' does not exist.
</screen>
Likewise, values in option definitions must have a correct type. For
instance, <option>services.httpd.enable</option> must be a Boolean
(<literal>true</literal> or <literal>false</literal>). Trying to give
it a value of another type, such as a string, will cause an error:
<screen>
The option value `services.httpd.enable' in `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix' is not a boolean.
</screen>
</para>
<para>Options have various types of values. The most important are:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Strings</term>
<listitem>
<para>Strings are enclosed in double quotes, e.g.
<programlisting>
networking.hostName = "dexter";
</programlisting>
Special characters can be escaped by prefixing them with a
backslash (e.g. <literal>\"</literal>).</para>
<para>Multi-line strings can be enclosed in <emphasis>double
single quotes</emphasis>, e.g.
<programlisting>
networking.extraHosts =
''
127.0.0.2 other-localhost
10.0.0.1 server
'';
</programlisting>
The main difference is that preceding whitespace is
automatically stripped from each line, and that characters like
<literal>"</literal> and <literal>\</literal> are not special
(making it more convenient for including things like shell
code).</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Booleans</term>
<listitem>
<para>These can be <literal>true</literal> or
<literal>false</literal>, e.g.
<programlisting>
networking.firewall.enable = true;
networking.firewall.allowPing = false;
</programlisting>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Integers</term>
<listitem>
<para>For example,
<programlisting>
boot.kernel.sysctl."net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time" = 60;
</programlisting>
(Note that here the attribute name
<literal>net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time</literal> is enclosed in
quotes to prevent it from being interpreted as a set named
<literal>net</literal> containing a set named
<literal>ipv4</literal>, and so on. This is because it’s not a
NixOS option but the literal name of a Linux kernel
setting.)</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Sets</term>
<listitem>
<para>Sets were introduced above. They are name/value pairs
enclosed in braces, as in the option definition
<programlisting>
fileSystems."/boot" =
{ device = "/dev/sda1";
fsType = "ext4";
options = "rw,data=ordered,relatime";
};
</programlisting>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Lists</term>
<listitem>
<para>The important thing to note about lists is that list
elements are separated by whitespace, like this:
<programlisting>
boot.kernelModules = [ "fuse" "kvm-intel" "coretemp" ];
</programlisting>
List elements can be any other type, e.g. sets:
<programlisting>
swapDevices = [ { device = "/dev/disk/by-label/swap"; } ];
</programlisting>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Packages</term>
<listitem>
<para>Usually, the packages you need are already part of the Nix
Packages collection, which is a set that can be accessed through
the function argument <varname>pkgs</varname>. Typical uses:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
[ pkgs.thunderbird
pkgs.emacs
];
postgresql.package = pkgs.postgresql90;
</programlisting>
The latter option definition changes the default PostgreSQL
package used by NixOS’s PostgreSQL service to 9.0. For more
information on packages, including how to add new ones, see
<xref linkend="sec-custom-packages"/>.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-configuration-syntax">
<title>Configuration Syntax</title>
<para>The NixOS configuration file
<filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> is actually a
<emphasis>Nix expression</emphasis>, which is the Nix package
manager’s purely functional language for describing how to build
packages and configurations. This means you have all the expressive
power of that language at your disposal, including the ability to
abstract over common patterns, which is very useful when managing
complex systems. The syntax and semantics of the Nix language are
fully described in the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#chap-writing-nix-expressions">Nix
manual</link>, but here we give a short overview of the most important
constructs useful in NixOS configuration files.</para>
<xi:include href="config-file.xml" />
<xi:include href="abstractions.xml" />
<xi:include href="modularity.xml" />
<xi:include href="summary.xml" />
</chapter>

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<part xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-configuration">
<title>Configuration</title>
<partintro>
<para>This chapter describes how to configure various aspects of a
NixOS machine through the configuration file
<filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>. As described in
<xref linkend="sec-changing-config" />, changes to this file only take
effect after you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>.</para>
</partintro>
<xi:include href="config-syntax.xml" />
<xi:include href="package-mgmt.xml" />
<xi:include href="user-mgmt.xml" />
<xi:include href="file-systems.xml" />
<xi:include href="x-windows.xml" />
<xi:include href="networking.xml" />
<xi:include href="linux-kernel.xml" />
<!-- Apache; libvirtd virtualisation -->
</part>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-customising-packages">
<title>Customising Packages</title>
<para>Some packages in Nixpkgs have options to enable or disable
optional functionality or change other aspects of the package. For
instance, the Firefox wrapper package (which provides Firefox with a
set of plugins such as the Adobe Flash player) has an option to enable
the Google Talk plugin. It can be set in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> as follows:
<filename>
nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableGoogleTalkPlugin = true;
</filename>
</para>
<warning><para>Unfortunately, Nixpkgs currently lacks a way to query
available configuration options.</para></warning>
<para>Apart from high-level options, it’s possible to tweak a package
in almost arbitrary ways, such as changing or disabling dependencies
of a package. For instance, the Emacs package in Nixpkgs by default
has a dependency on GTK+ 2. If you want to build it against GTK+ 3,
you can specify that as follows:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ (pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; }) ];
</programlisting>
The function <varname>override</varname> performs the call to the Nix
function that produces Emacs, with the original arguments amended by
the set of arguments specified by you. So here the function argument
<varname>gtk</varname> gets the value <literal>pkgs.gtk3</literal>,
causing Emacs to depend on GTK+ 3. (The parentheses are necessary
because in Nix, function application binds more weakly than list
construction, so without them,
<literal>environment.systemPackages</literal> would be a list with two
elements.)</para>
<para>Even greater customisation is possible using the function
<varname>overrideDerivation</varname>. While the
<varname>override</varname> mechanism above overrides the arguments of
a package function, <varname>overrideDerivation</varname> allows
changing the <emphasis>result</emphasis> of the function. This
permits changing any aspect of the package, such as the source code.
For instance, if you want to override the source code of Emacs, you
can say:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
[ (pkgs.lib.overrideDerivation pkgs.emacs (attrs: {
name = "emacs-25.0-pre";
src = /path/to/my/emacs/tree;
}))
];
</programlisting>
Here, <varname>overrideDerivation</varname> takes the Nix derivation
specified by <varname>pkgs.emacs</varname> and produces a new
derivation in which the original’s <literal>name</literal> and
<literal>src</literal> attribute have been replaced by the given
values. The original attributes are accessible via
<varname>attrs</varname>.</para>
<para>The overrides shown above are not global. They do not affect
the original package; other packages in Nixpkgs continue to depend on
the original rather than the customised package. This means that if
another package in your system depends on the original package, you
end up with two instances of the package. If you want to have
everything depend on your customised instance, you can apply a
<emphasis>global</emphasis> override as follows:
<screen>
nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
{ emacs = pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; };
};
</screen>
The effect of this definition is essentially equivalent to modifying
the <literal>emacs</literal> attribute in the Nixpkgs source tree.
Any package in Nixpkgs that depends on <literal>emacs</literal> will
be passed your customised instance. (However, the value
<literal>pkgs.emacs</literal> in
<varname>nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides</varname> refers to the
original rather than overridden instance, to prevent an infinite
recursion.)</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-declarative-package-mgmt">
<title>Declarative Package Management</title>
<para>With declarative package management, you specify which packages
you want on your system by setting the option
<option>environment.systemPackages</option>. For instance, adding the
following line to <filename>configuration.nix</filename> enables the
Mozilla Thunderbird email application:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.thunderbird ];
</programlisting>
The effect of this specification is that the Thunderbird package from
Nixpkgs will be built or downloaded as part of the system when you run
<command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>.</para>
<para>You can get a list of the available packages as follows:
<screen>
$ nix-env -qaP '*' --description
nixos.pkgs.firefox firefox-23.0 Mozilla Firefox - the browser, reloaded
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
The first column in the output is the <emphasis>attribute
name</emphasis>, such as
<literal>nixos.pkgs.thunderbird</literal>. (The
<literal>nixos</literal> prefix allows distinguishing between
different channels that you might have.)</para>
<para>To “uninstall” a package, simply remove it from
<option>environment.systemPackages</option> and run
<command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>.</para>
<xi:include href="customizing-packages.xml" />
<xi:include href="adding-custom-packages.xml" />
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-file-systems">
<title>File Systems</title>
<para>You can define file systems using the
<option>fileSystems</option> configuration option. For instance, the
following definition causes NixOS to mount the Ext4 file system on
device <filename>/dev/disk/by-label/data</filename> onto the mount
point <filename>/data</filename>:
<programlisting>
fileSystems."/data" =
{ device = "/dev/disk/by-label/data";
fsType = "ext4";
};
</programlisting>
Mount points are created automatically if they don’t already exist.
For <option>device</option>, it’s best to use the topology-independent
device aliases in <filename>/dev/disk/by-label</filename> and
<filename>/dev/disk/by-uuid</filename>, as these don’t change if the
topology changes (e.g. if a disk is moved to another IDE
controller).</para>
<para>You can usually omit the file system type
(<option>fsType</option>), since <command>mount</command> can usually
detect the type and load the necessary kernel module automatically.
However, if the file system is needed at early boot (in the initial
ramdisk) and is not <literal>ext2</literal>, <literal>ext3</literal>
or <literal>ext4</literal>, then it’s best to specify
<option>fsType</option> to ensure that the kernel module is
available.</para>
<xi:include href="LUKS-file-systems.xml" />
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-firewall">
<title>Firewall</title>
<para>NixOS has a simple stateful firewall that blocks incoming
connections and other unexpected packets. The firewall applies to
both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. It is enabled by default. It can be
disabled as follows:
<programlisting>
networking.firewall.enable = false;
</programlisting>
If the firewall is enabled, you can open specific TCP ports to the
outside world:
<programlisting>
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 80 443 ];
</programlisting>
Note that TCP port 22 (ssh) is opened automatically if the SSH daemon
is enabled (<option>services.openssh.enable = true</option>). UDP
ports can be opened through
<option>networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts</option>. Also of
interest is
<programlisting>
networking.firewall.allowPing = true;
</programlisting>
to allow the machine to respond to ping requests. (ICMPv6 pings are
always allowed.)</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-ipv4">
<title>IPv4 Configuration</title>
<para>By default, NixOS uses DHCP (specifically,
<command>dhcpcd</command>) to automatically configure network
interfaces. However, you can configure an interface manually as
follows:
<programlisting>
networking.interfaces.eth0 = { ipAddress = "192.168.1.2"; prefixLength = 24; };
</programlisting>
(The network prefix can also be specified using the option
<literal>subnetMask</literal>,
e.g. <literal>"255.255.255.0"</literal>, but this is deprecated.)
Typically you’ll also want to set a default gateway and set of name
servers:
<programlisting>
networking.defaultGateway = "192.168.1.1";
networking.nameservers = [ "8.8.8.8" ];
</programlisting>
</para>
<note><para>Statically configured interfaces are set up by the systemd
service
<replaceable>interface-name</replaceable><literal>-cfg.service</literal>.
The default gateway and name server configuration is performed by
<literal>network-setup.service</literal>.</para></note>
<para>The host name is set using <option>networking.hostName</option>:
<programlisting>
networking.hostName = "cartman";
</programlisting>
The default host name is <literal>nixos</literal>. Set it to the
empty string (<literal>""</literal>) to allow the DHCP server to
provide the host name.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-ipv6">
<title>IPv6 Configuration</title>
<para>IPv6 is enabled by default. Stateless address autoconfiguration
is used to automatically assign IPv6 addresses to all interfaces. You
can disable IPv6 support globally by setting:
<programlisting>
networking.enableIPv6 = false;
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-kernel-config">
<title>Linux Kernel</title>
<para>You can override the Linux kernel and associated packages using
the option <option>boot.kernelPackages</option>. For instance, this
selects the Linux 3.10 kernel:
<programlisting>
boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_3_10;
</programlisting>
Note that this not only replaces the kernel, but also packages that
are specific to the kernel version, such as the NVIDIA video drivers.
This ensures that driver packages are consistent with the
kernel.</para>
<para>The default Linux kernel configuration should be fine for most users. You can see the configuration of your current kernel with the following command:
<programlisting>
cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip
</programlisting>
If you want to change the kernel configuration, you can use the
<option>packageOverrides</option> feature (see <xref
linkend="sec-customising-packages" />). For instance, to enable
support for the kernel debugger KGDB:
<programlisting>
nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
{ linux_3_4 = pkgs.linux_3_4.override {
extraConfig =
''
KGDB y
'';
};
};
</programlisting>
<varname>extraConfig</varname> takes a list of Linux kernel
configuration options, one per line. The name of the option should
not include the prefix <literal>CONFIG_</literal>. The option value
is typically <literal>y</literal>, <literal>n</literal> or
<literal>m</literal> (to build something as a kernel module).</para>
<para>Kernel modules for hardware devices are generally loaded
automatically by <command>udev</command>. You can force a module to
be loaded via <option>boot.kernelModules</option>, e.g.
<programlisting>
boot.kernelModules = [ "fuse" "kvm-intel" "coretemp" ];
</programlisting>
If the module is required early during the boot (e.g. to mount the
root file system), you can use
<option>boot.initrd.extraKernelModules</option>:
<programlisting>
boot.initrd.extraKernelModules = [ "cifs" ];
</programlisting>
This causes the specified modules and their dependencies to be added
to the initial ramdark.</para>
<para>Kernel runtime parameters can be set through
<option>boot.kernel.sysctl</option>, e.g.
<programlisting>
boot.kernel.sysctl."net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time" = 120;
</programlisting>
sets the kernel’s TCP keepalive time to 120 seconds. To see the
available parameters, run <command>sysctl -a</command>.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-modularity">
<title>Modularity</title>
<para>The NixOS configuration mechanism is modular. If your
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> becomes too big, you can split
it into multiple files. Likewise, if you have multiple NixOS
configurations (e.g. for different computers) with some commonality,
you can move the common configuration into a shared file.</para>
<para>Modules have exactly the same syntax as
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>. In fact,
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> is itself a module. You can
use other modules by including them from
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>, e.g.:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ imports = [ ./vpn.nix ./kde.nix ];
services.httpd.enable = true;
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.emacs ];
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
}
</programlisting>
Here, we include two modules from the same directory,
<filename>vpn.nix</filename> and <filename>kde.nix</filename>. The
latter might look like this:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ services.xserver.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.kdm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.kde4.enable = true;
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.kde4.kscreensaver ];
}
</programlisting>
Note that both <filename>configuration.nix</filename> and
<filename>kde.nix</filename> define the option
<option>environment.systemPackages</option>. When multiple modules
define an option, NixOS will try to <emphasis>merge</emphasis> the
definitions. In the case of
<option>environment.systemPackages</option>, that’s easy: the lists of
packages can simply be concatenated. The value in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> is merged last, so for
list-type options, it will appear at the end of the merged list. If
you want it to appear first, you can use <varname>mkBefore</varname>:
<programlisting>
boot.kernelModules = mkBefore [ "kvm-intel" ];
</programlisting>
This causes the <literal>kvm-intel</literal> kernel module to be
loaded before any other kernel modules.</para>
<para>For other types of options, a merge may not be possible. For
instance, if two modules define
<option>services.httpd.adminAddr</option>,
<command>nixos-rebuild</command> will give an error:
<screen>
The unique option `services.httpd.adminAddr' is defined multiple times, in `/etc/nixos/httpd.nix' and `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix'.
</screen>
When that happens, it’s possible to force one definition take
precedence over the others:
<programlisting>
services.httpd.adminAddr = pkgs.lib.mkForce "bob@example.org";
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>When using multiple modules, you may need to access
configuration values defined in other modules. This is what the
<varname>config</varname> function argument is for: it contains the
complete, merged system configuration. That is,
<varname>config</varname> is the result of combining the
configurations returned by every module<footnote><para>If you’re
wondering how it’s possible that the (indirect)
<emphasis>result</emphasis> of a function is passed as an
<emphasis>input</emphasis> to that same function: that’s because Nix
is a “lazy” language — it only computes values when they are needed.
This works as long as no individual configuration value depends on
itself.</para></footnote>. For example, here is a module that adds
some packages to <option>environment.systemPackages</option> only if
<option>services.xserver.enable</option> is set to
<literal>true</literal> somewhere else:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ environment.systemPackages =
if config.services.xserver.enable then
[ pkgs.firefox
pkgs.thunderbird
]
else
[ ];
}
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>With multiple modules, it may not be obvious what the final
value of a configuration option is. The command
<option>nixos-option</option> allows you to find out:
<screen>
$ nixos-option services.xserver.enable
true
$ nixos-option boot.kernelModules
[ "tun" "ipv6" "loop" <replaceable>...</replaceable> ]
</screen>
Interactive exploration of the configuration is possible using
<command
xlink:href="https://github.com/edolstra/nix-repl">nix-repl</command>,
a read-eval-print loop for Nix expressions. It’s not installed by
default; run <literal>nix-env -i nix-repl</literal> to get it. A
typical use:
<screen>
$ nix-repl '&lt;nixos>'
nix-repl> config.networking.hostName
"mandark"
nix-repl> map (x: x.hostName) config.services.httpd.virtualHosts
[ "example.org" "example.gov" ]
</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-networkmanager">
<title>NetworkManager</title>
<para>To facilitate network configuration, some desktop environments
use NetworkManager. You can enable NetworkManager by setting:
<programlisting>
services.networkmanager.enable = true;
</programlisting>
Some desktop managers (e.g., GNOME) enable NetworkManager
automatically for you.</para>
<para>All users that should have permission to change network settings
must belong to the <code>networkmanager</code> group.</para>
<note><para><code>services.networkmanager</code> and
<code>services.wireless</code> can not be enabled at the same time:
you can still connect to the wireless networks using
NetworkManager.</para></note>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-networking">
<title>Networking</title>
<para>This section describes how to configure networking components on
your NixOS machine.</para>
<xi:include href="network-manager.xml" />
<xi:include href="ssh.xml" />
<xi:include href="ipv4-config.xml" />
<xi:include href="ipv6-config.xml" />
<xi:include href="firewall.xml" />
<xi:include href="wireless.xml" />
<xi:include href="ad-hoc-network-config.xml" />
<!-- TODO: OpenVPN, NAT -->
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-package-management">
<title>Package Management</title>
<para>This section describes how to add additional packages to your
system. NixOS has two distinct styles of package management:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Declarative</emphasis>, where you declare
what packages you want in your
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>. Every time you run
<command>nixos-rebuild</command>, NixOS will ensure that you get a
consistent set of binaries corresponding to your
specification.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Ad hoc</emphasis>, where you install,
upgrade and uninstall packages via the <command>nix-env</command>
command. This style allows mixing packages from different Nixpkgs
versions. It’s the only choice for non-root
users.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<xi:include href="declarative-packages.xml" />
<xi:include href="ad-hoc-packages.xml" />
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-ssh">
<title>Secure Shell Access</title>
<para>Secure shell (SSH) access to your machine can be enabled by
setting:
<programlisting>
services.openssh.enable = true;
</programlisting>
By default, root logins using a password are disallowed. They can be
disabled entirely by setting
<literal>services.openssh.permitRootLogin</literal> to
<literal>"no"</literal>.</para>
<para>You can declaratively specify authorised RSA/DSA public keys for
a user as follows:
<!-- FIXME: this might not work if the user is unmanaged. -->
<programlisting>
users.extraUsers.alice.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys =
[ "ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1kc3MAAACBAPIkGWVEt4..." ];
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-nix-syntax-summary">
<title>Syntax Summary</title>
<para>Below is a summary of the most important syntactic constructs in
the Nix expression language. It’s not complete. In particular, there
are many other built-in functions. See the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#chap-writing-nix-expressions">Nix
manual</link> for the rest.</para>
<informaltable frame='none'>
<tgroup cols='2'>
<colspec colname='c1' rowsep='1' colsep='1' />
<colspec colname='c2' rowsep='1' />
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Example</entry>
<entry>Description</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Basic values</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>"Hello world"</literal></entry>
<entry>A string</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>"${pkgs.bash}/bin/sh"</literal></entry>
<entry>A string containing an expression (expands to <literal>"/nix/store/<replaceable>hash</replaceable>-bash-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/bin/sh"</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>true</literal>, <literal>false</literal></entry>
<entry>Booleans</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>123</literal></entry>
<entry>An integer</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>./foo.png</literal></entry>
<entry>A path (relative to the containing Nix expression)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Compound values</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x = 1; y = 2; }</literal></entry>
<entry>An set with attributes names <literal>x</literal> and <literal>y</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ foo.bar = 1; }</literal></entry>
<entry>A nested set, equivalent to <literal>{ foo = { bar = 1; }; }</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>rec { x = "bla"; y = x + "bar"; }</literal></entry>
<entry>A recursive set, equivalent to <literal>{ x = "foo"; y = "foobar"; }</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>[ "foo" "bar" ]</literal></entry>
<entry>A list with two elements</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Operators</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>"foo" + "bar"</literal></entry>
<entry>String concatenation</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>1 + 2</literal></entry>
<entry>Integer addition</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>"foo" == "f" + "oo"</literal></entry>
<entry>Equality test (evaluates to <literal>true</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>"foo" != "bar"</literal></entry>
<entry>Inequality test (evaluates to <literal>true</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>!true</literal></entry>
<entry>Boolean negation</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x = 1; y = 2; }.x</literal></entry>
<entry>Attribute selection (evaluates to <literal>1</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x = 1; y = 2; }.z or 3</literal></entry>
<entry>Attribute selection with default (evaluates to <literal>3</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x = 1; y = 2; } // { z = 3; }</literal></entry>
<entry>Merge two sets (attributes in the right-hand set taking precedence)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Control structures</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>if 1 + 1 == 2 then "yes!" else "no!"</literal></entry>
<entry>Conditional expression</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>assert 1 + 1 == 2; "yes!"</literal></entry>
<entry>Assertion check (evaluates to <literal>"yes!"</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>let x = "foo"; y = "bar"; in x + y</literal></entry>
<entry>Variable definition</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>with pkgs.lib; head [ 1 2 3 ]</literal></entry>
<entry>Add all attributes from the given set to the scope
(evaluates to <literal>1</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Functions (lambdas)</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>x: x + 1</literal></entry>
<entry>A function that expects an integer and returns it increased by 1</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>(x: x + 1) 100</literal></entry>
<entry>A function call (evaluates to 101)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>let inc = x: x + 1; in inc (inc (inc 100))</literal></entry>
<entry>A function bound to a variable and subsequently called by name (evaluates to 103)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x, y }: x + y</literal></entry>
<entry>A function that expects a set with required attributes
<literal>x</literal> and <literal>y</literal> and concatenates
them</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x, y ? "bar" }: x + y</literal></entry>
<entry>A function that expects a set with required attribute
<literal>x</literal> and optional <literal>y</literal>, using
<literal>"bar"</literal> as default value for
<literal>y</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x, y, ... }: x + y</literal></entry>
<entry>A function that expects a set with required attributes
<literal>x</literal> and <literal>y</literal> and ignores any
other attributes</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>{ x, y } @ args: x + y</literal></entry>
<entry>A function that expects a set with required attributes
<literal>x</literal> and <literal>y</literal>, and binds the
whole set to <literal>args</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry namest="c1" nameend="c2"><emphasis>Built-in functions</emphasis></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>import ./foo.nix</literal></entry>
<entry>Load and return Nix expression in given file</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>map (x: x + x) [ 1 2 3 ]</literal></entry>
<entry>Apply a function to every element of a list (evaluates to <literal>[ 2 4 6 ]</literal>)</entry>
</row>
<!--
<row>
<entry><literal>throw "Urgh"</literal></entry>
<entry>Raise an error condition</entry>
</row>
-->
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</informaltable>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-user-management">
<title>User Management</title>
<para>NixOS supports both declarative and imperative styles of user
management. In the declarative style, users are specified in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>. For instance, the following
states that a user account named <literal>alice</literal> shall exist:
<programlisting>
users.extraUsers.alice =
{ createHome = true;
home = "/home/alice";
description = "Alice Foobar";
extraGroups = [ "wheel" "networkmanager" ];
useDefaultShell = true;
openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-dss AAAAB3Nza... alice@foobar" ];
};
</programlisting>
Note that <literal>alice</literal> is a member of the
<literal>wheel</literal> and <literal>networkmanager</literal> groups,
which allows her to use <command>sudo</command> to execute commands as
<literal>root</literal> and to configure the network, respectively.
Also note the SSH public key that allows remote logins with the
corresponding private key. Users created in this way do not have a
password by default, so they cannot log in via mechanisms that require
a password. However, you can use the <command>passwd</command> program
to set a password, which is retained across invocations of
<command>nixos-rebuild</command>.</para>
<para>If you set users.mutableUsers to false, then the contents of /etc/passwd
and /etc/group will be congruent to your NixOS configuration. For instance,
if you remove a user from users.extraUsers and run nixos-rebuild, the user
account will cease to exist. Also, imperative commands for managing users
and groups, such as useradd, are no longer available.</para>
<para>A user ID (uid) is assigned automatically. You can also specify
a uid manually by adding
<programlisting>
uid = 1000;
</programlisting>
to the user specification.</para>
<para>Groups can be specified similarly. The following states that a
group named <literal>students</literal> shall exist:
<programlisting>
users.extraGroups.students.gid = 1000;
</programlisting>
As with users, the group ID (gid) is optional and will be assigned
automatically if it’s missing.</para>
<warning><para>Currently declarative user management is not perfect:
<command>nixos-rebuild</command> does not know how to realise certain
configuration changes. This includes removing a user or group, and
removing group membership from a user.</para></warning>
<para>In the imperative style, users and groups are managed by
commands such as <command>useradd</command>,
<command>groupmod</command> and so on. For instance, to create a user
account named <literal>alice</literal>:
<screen>
$ useradd -m alice</screen>
The flag <option>-m</option> causes the creation of a home directory
for the new user, which is generally what you want. The user does not
have an initial password and therefore cannot log in. A password can
be set using the <command>passwd</command> utility:
<screen>
$ passwd alice
Enter new UNIX password: ***
Retype new UNIX password: ***
</screen>
A user can be deleted using <command>userdel</command>:
<screen>
$ userdel -r alice</screen>
The flag <option>-r</option> deletes the user’s home directory.
Accounts can be modified using <command>usermod</command>. Unix
groups can be managed using <command>groupadd</command>,
<command>groupmod</command> and <command>groupdel</command>.</para>
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-wireless">
<title>Wireless Networks</title>
<para>For a desktop installation using NetworkManager (e.g., GNOME),
you just have to make sure the user is in the
<code>networkmanager</code> group and you can skip the rest of this
section on wireless networks.</para>
<para>
NixOS will start wpa_supplicant for you if you enable this setting:
<programlisting>
networking.wireless.enable = true;
</programlisting>
NixOS currently does not generate wpa_supplicant's
configuration file, <literal>/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf</literal>. You should edit this file
yourself to define wireless networks, WPA keys and so on (see
wpa_supplicant.conf(5)).
</para>
<para>
If you are using WPA2 the <command>wpa_passphrase</command> tool might be useful
to generate the <literal>wpa_supplicant.conf</literal>.
<screen>
$ wpa_passphrase ESSID PSK > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf</screen>
After you have edited the <literal>wpa_supplicant.conf</literal>,
you need to restart the wpa_supplicant service.
<screen>
$ systemctl restart wpa_supplicant.service</screen>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-x11">
<title>X Window System</title>
<para>The X Window System (X11) provides the basis of NixOS’ graphical
user interface. It can be enabled as follows:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.enable = true;
</programlisting>
The X server will automatically detect and use the appropriate video
driver from a set of X.org drivers (such as <literal>vesa</literal>
and <literal>intel</literal>). You can also specify a driver
manually, e.g.
<programlisting>
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "r128" ];
</programlisting>
to enable X.org’s <literal>xf86-video-r128</literal> driver.</para>
<para>You also need to enable at least one desktop or window manager.
Otherwise, you can only log into a plain undecorated
<command>xterm</command> window. Thus you should pick one or more of
the following lines:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.desktopManager.kde4.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.xfce.enable = true;
services.xserver.windowManager.xmonad.enable = true;
services.xserver.windowManager.twm.enable = true;
services.xserver.windowManager.icewm.enable = true;
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>NixOS’s default <emphasis>display manager</emphasis> (the
program that provides a graphical login prompt and manages the X
server) is SLiM. You can select KDE’s <command>kdm</command> instead:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.displayManager.kdm.enable = true;
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The X server is started automatically at boot time. If you
don’t want this to happen, you can set:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.autorun = false;
</programlisting>
The X server can then be started manually:
<screen>
$ systemctl start display-manager.service
</screen>
</para>
<simplesect><title>NVIDIA Graphics Cards</title>
<para>NVIDIA provides a proprietary driver for its graphics cards that
has better 3D performance than the X.org drivers. It is not enabled
by default because it’s not free software. You can enable it as follows:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "nvidia" ];
</programlisting>
You may need to reboot after enabling this driver to prevent a clash
with other kernel modules.</para>
<para>On 64-bit systems, if you want full acceleration for 32-bit
programs such as Wine, you should also set the following:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.driSupport32Bit = true;
</programlisting>
</para>
</simplesect>
<simplesect><title>Touchpads</title>
<para>Support for Synaptics touchpads (found in many laptops such as
the Dell Latitude series) can be enabled as follows:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.synaptics.enable = true;
</programlisting>
The driver has many options (see <xref linkend="ch-options"/>). For
instance, the following enables two-finger scrolling:
<programlisting>
services.xserver.synaptics.twoFingerScroll = true;
</programlisting>
</para>
</simplesect>
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="ch-containers">
<title>Containers</title>
<para>NixOS allows you to easily run other NixOS instances as
<emphasis>containers</emphasis>. Containers are a light-weight
approach to virtualisation that runs software in the container at the
same speed as in the host system. NixOS containers share the Nix store
of the host, making container creation very efficient.</para>
<warning><para>Currently, NixOS containers are not perfectly isolated
from the host system. This means that a user with root access to the
container can do things that affect the host. So you should not give
container root access to untrusted users.</para></warning>
<para>NixOS containers can be created in two ways: imperatively, using
the command <command>nixos-container</command>, and declaratively, by
specifying them in your <filename>configuration.nix</filename>. The
declarative approach implies that containers get upgraded along with
your host system when you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, which
is often not what you want. By contrast, in the imperative approach,
containers are configured and updated independently from the host
system.</para>
<section><title>Imperative container management</title>
<para>We’ll cover imperative container management using
<command>nixos-container</command> first. You create a container with
identifier <literal>foo</literal> as follows:
<screen>
$ nixos-container create foo
</screen>
This creates the container’s root directory in
<filename>/var/lib/containers/foo</filename> and a small configuration
file in <filename>/etc/containers/foo.conf</filename>. It also builds
the container’s initial system configuration and stores it in
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-container/foo/system</filename>. You
can modify the initial configuration of the container on the command
line. For instance, to create a container that has
<command>sshd</command> running, with the given public key for
<literal>root</literal>:
<screen>
$ nixos-container create foo --config 'services.openssh.enable = true; \
users.extraUsers.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = ["ssh-dss AAAAB3N…"];'
</screen>
</para>
<para>Creating a container does not start it. To start the container,
run:
<screen>
$ nixos-container start foo
</screen>
This command will return as soon as the container has booted and has
reached <literal>multi-user.target</literal>. On the host, the
container runs within a systemd unit called
<literal>container@<replaceable>container-name</replaceable>.service</literal>.
Thus, if something went wrong, you can get status info using
<command>systemctl</command>:
<screen>
$ systemctl status container@foo
</screen>
</para>
<para>If the container has started succesfully, you can log in as
root using the <command>root-login</command> operation:
<screen>
$ nixos-container root-login foo
[root@foo:~]#
</screen>
Note that only root on the host can do this (since there is no
authentication). You can also get a regular login prompt using the
<command>login</command> operation, which is available to all users on
the host:
<screen>
$ nixos-container login foo
foo login: alice
Password: ***
</screen>
With <command>nixos-container run</command>, you can execute arbitrary
commands in the container:
<screen>
$ nixos-container run foo -- uname -a
Linux foo 3.4.82 #1-NixOS SMP Thu Mar 20 14:44:05 UTC 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
</screen>
</para>
<para>There are several ways to change the configuration of the
container. First, on the host, you can edit
<literal>/var/lib/container/<replaceable>name</replaceable>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</literal>,
and run
<screen>
$ nixos-container update foo
</screen>
This will build and activate the new configuration. You can also
specify a new configuration on the command line:
<screen>
$ nixos-container update foo --config 'services.httpd.enable = true; \
services.httpd.adminAddr = "foo@example.org";'
$ curl http://$(nixos-container show-ip foo)/
&lt;!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">…
</screen>
However, note that this will overwrite the container’s
<filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>.</para>
<para>Alternatively, you can change the configuration from within the
container itself by running <command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>
inside the container. Note that the container by default does not have
a copy of the NixOS channel, so you should run <command>nix-channel
--update</command> first.</para>
<para>Containers can be stopped and started using
<literal>nixos-container stop</literal> and <literal>nixos-container
start</literal>, respectively, or by using
<command>systemctl</command> on the container’s service unit. To
destroy a container, including its file system, do
<screen>
$ nixos-container destroy foo
</screen>
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Declarative container specification</title>
<para>You can also specify containers and their configuration in the
host’s <filename>configuration.nix</filename>. For example, the
following specifies that there shall be a container named
<literal>database</literal> running PostgreSQL:
<programlisting>
containers.database =
{ config =
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ services.postgresql.enable = true;
services.postgresql.package = pkgs.postgresql92;
};
};
</programlisting>
If you run <literal>nixos-rebuild switch</literal>, the container will
be built and started. If the container was already running, it will be
updated in place, without rebooting.</para>
<para>By default, declarative containers share the network namespace
of the host, meaning that they can listen on (privileged)
ports. However, they cannot change the network configuration. You can
give a container its own network as follows:
<programlisting>
containers.database =
{ privateNetwork = true;
hostAddress = "192.168.100.10";
localAddress = "192.168.100.11";
};
</programlisting>
This gives the container a private virtual Ethernet interface with IP
address <literal>192.168.100.11</literal>, which is hooked up to a
virtual Ethernet interface on the host with IP address
<literal>192.168.100.10</literal>. (See the next section for details
on container networking.)</para>
<para>To disable the container, just remove it from
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> and run <literal>nixos-rebuild
switch</literal>. Note that this will not delete the root directory of
the container in <literal>/var/lib/containers</literal>.</para>
</section>
<section><title>Networking</title>
<para>When you create a container using <literal>nixos-container
create</literal>, it gets it own private IPv4 address in the range
<literal>10.233.0.0/16</literal>. You can get the container’s IPv4
address as follows:
<screen>
$ nixos-container show-ip foo
10.233.4.2
$ ping -c1 10.233.4.2
64 bytes from 10.233.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.106 ms
</screen>
</para>
<para>Networking is implemented using a pair of virtual Ethernet
devices. The network interface in the container is called
<literal>eth0</literal>, while the matching interface in the host is
called <literal>ve-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>
(e.g., <literal>ve-foo</literal>). The container has its own network
namespace and the <literal>CAP_NET_ADMIN</literal> capability, so it
can perform arbitrary network configuration such as setting up
firewall rules, without affecting or having access to the host’s
network.</para>
<para>By default, containers cannot talk to the outside network. If
you want that, you should set up Network Address Translation (NAT)
rules on the host to rewrite container traffic to use your external
IP address. This can be accomplished using the following configuration
on the host:
<programlisting>
networking.nat.enable = true;
networking.nat.internalInterfaces = ["ve-+"];
networking.nat.externalInterface = "eth0";
</programlisting>
where <literal>eth0</literal> should be replaced with the desired
external interface. Note that <literal>ve-+</literal> is a wildcard
that matches all container interfaces.</para>
</section>
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-building-cd">
<title>Building Your Own NixOS CD</title>
<para>Building a NixOS CD is as easy as configuring your own computer. The
idea is to use another module which will replace
your <filename>configuration.nix</filename> to configure the system that
would be installed on the CD.</para>
<para>Default CD/DVD configurations are available
inside <filename>nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd</filename>. To build them
you have to set <envar>NIXOS_CONFIG</envar> before
running <command>nix-build</command> to build the ISO.
<screen>
$ nix-build -A config.system.build.isoImage -I nixos-config=modules/installer/cd-dvd/installation-cd-minimal.nix</screen>
</para>
<para>Before burning your CD/DVD, you can check the content of the image by mounting anywhere like
suggested by the following command:
<screen>
$ mount -o loop -t iso9660 ./result/iso/cd.iso /mnt/iso</screen>
</para>
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-building-parts">
<title>Building Specific Parts of NixOS</title>
<para>With the command <command>nix-build</command>, you can build
specific parts of your NixOS configuration. This is done as follows:
<screen>
$ cd <replaceable>/path/to/nixpkgs/nixos</replaceable>
$ nix-build -A config.<replaceable>option</replaceable></screen>
where <replaceable>option</replaceable> is a NixOS option with type
“derivation” (i.e. something that can be built). Attributes of
interest include:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>system.build.toplevel</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>The top-level option that builds the entire NixOS system.
Everything else in your configuration is indirectly pulled in by
this option. This is what <command>nixos-rebuild</command>
builds and what <filename>/run/current-system</filename> points
to afterwards.</para>
<para>A shortcut to build this is:
<screen>
$ nix-build -A system</screen>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>system.build.manual.manual</varname></term>
<listitem><para>The NixOS manual.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>system.build.etc</varname></term>
<listitem><para>A tree of symlinks that form the static parts of
<filename>/etc</filename>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>system.build.initialRamdisk</varname></term>
<term><varname>system.build.kernel</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>The initial ramdisk and kernel of the system. This allows
a quick way to test whether the kernel and the initial ramdisk
boot correctly, by using QEMU’s <option>-kernel</option> and
<option>-initrd</option> options:
<screen>
$ nix-build -A config.system.build.initialRamdisk -o initrd
$ nix-build -A config.system.build.kernel -o kernel
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel ./kernel/bzImage -initrd ./initrd/initrd -hda /dev/null
</screen>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>system.build.nixos-rebuild</varname></term>
<term><varname>system.build.nixos-install</varname></term>
<term><varname>system.build.nixos-generate-config</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>These build the corresponding NixOS commands.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>systemd.units.<replaceable>unit-name</replaceable>.unit</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>This builds the unit with the specified name. Note that
since unit names contain dots
(e.g. <literal>httpd.service</literal>), you need to put them
between quotes, like this:
<screen>
$ nix-build -A 'config.systemd.units."httpd.service".unit'
</screen>
You can also test individual units, without rebuilding the whole
system, by putting them in
<filename>/run/systemd/system</filename>:
<screen>
$ cp $(nix-build -A 'config.systemd.units."httpd.service".unit')/httpd.service \
/run/systemd/system/tmp-httpd.service
$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl start tmp-httpd.service
</screen>
Note that the unit must not have the same name as any unit in
<filename>/etc/systemd/system</filename> since those take
precedence over <filename>/run/systemd/system</filename>.
That’s why the unit is installed as
<filename>tmp-httpd.service</filename> here.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</chapter>

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<part xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-development">
<title>Development</title>
<partintro>
<para>This chapter describes how you can modify and extend
NixOS.</para>
</partintro>
<xi:include href="sources.xml" />
<xi:include href="writing-modules.xml" />
<xi:include href="building-parts.xml" />
<xi:include href="building-nixos.xml" />
<xi:include href="testing-installer.xml" />
</part>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-nixos-tests">
<title>NixOS Tests</title>
<para>When you add some feature to NixOS, you should write a test for
it. NixOS tests are kept in the directory <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/nixos/tests">nixos/tests</filename>,
and are executed (using Nix) by a testing framework that automatically
starts one or more virtual machines containing the NixOS system(s)
required for the test.</para>
<xi:include href="writing-nixos-tests.xml" />
<xi:include href="running-nixos-tests.xml" />
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-option-declarations">
<title>Option Declarations</title>
<para>An option declaration specifies the name, type and description
of a NixOS configuration option. It is illegal to define an option
that hasn’t been declared in any module. A option declaration
generally looks like this:
<programlisting>
options = {
<replaceable>name</replaceable> = mkOption {
type = <replaceable>type specification</replaceable>;
default = <replaceable>default value</replaceable>;
example = <replaceable>example value</replaceable>;
description = "<replaceable>Description for use in the NixOS manual.</replaceable>";
};
};
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The function <varname>mkOption</varname> accepts the following arguments.
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>type</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>The type of the option (see below). It may be omitted,
but that’s not advisable since it may lead to errors that are
hard to diagnose.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>default</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>The default value used if no value is defined by any
module. A default is not required; in that case, if the option
value is ever used, an error will be thrown.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>example</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>An example value that will be shown in the NixOS manual.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>description</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>A textual description of the option, in DocBook format,
that will be included in the NixOS manual.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
<para>Here is a non-exhaustive list of option types:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.bool</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>A Boolean.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.int</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>An integer.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.str</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>A string.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.lines</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>A string. If there are multiple definitions, they are
concatenated, with newline characters in between.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.path</varname></term>
<listitem>
<para>A path, defined as anything that, when coerced to a
string, starts with a slash. This includes derivations.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.listOf</varname> <replaceable>t</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
<para>A list of elements of type <replaceable>t</replaceable>
(e.g., <literal>types.listOf types.str</literal> is a list of
strings). Multiple definitions are concatenated together.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.attrsOf</varname> <replaceable>t</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
<para>A set of elements of type <replaceable>t</replaceable>
(e.g., <literal>types.attrsOf types.int</literal> is a set of
name/value pairs, the values being integers).</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>types.nullOr</varname> <replaceable>t</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
<para>Either the value <literal>null</literal> or something of
type <replaceable>t</replaceable>.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
You can also create new types using the function
<varname>mkOptionType</varname>. See
<filename>lib/types.nix</filename> in Nixpkgs for details.</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-option-definitions">
<title>Option Definitions</title>
<para>Option definitions are generally straight-forward bindings of values to option names, like
<programlisting>
config = {
services.httpd.enable = true;
};
</programlisting>
However, sometimes you need to wrap an option definition or set of
option definitions in a <emphasis>property</emphasis> to achieve
certain effects:</para>
<simplesect><title>Delaying Conditionals</title>
<para>If a set of option definitions is conditional on the value of
another option, you may need to use <varname>mkIf</varname>.
Consider, for instance:
<programlisting>
config = if config.services.httpd.enable then {
environment.systemPackages = [ <replaceable>...</replaceable> ];
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
} else {};
</programlisting>
This definition will cause Nix to fail with an “infinite recursion”
error. Why? Because the value of
<option>config.services.httpd.enable</option> depends on the value
being constructed here. After all, you could also write the clearly
circular and contradictory:
<programlisting>
config = if config.services.httpd.enable then {
services.httpd.enable = false;
} else {
services.httpd.enable = true;
};
</programlisting>
The solution is to write:
<programlisting>
config = mkIf config.services.httpd.enable {
environment.systemPackages = [ <replaceable>...</replaceable> ];
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
};
</programlisting>
The special function <varname>mkIf</varname> causes the evaluation of
the conditional to be “pushed down” into the individual definitions,
as if you had written:
<programlisting>
config = {
environment.systemPackages = if config.services.httpd.enable then [ <replaceable>...</replaceable> ] else [];
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
};
</programlisting>
</para>
</simplesect>
<simplesect><title>Setting Priorities</title>
<para>A module can override the definitions of an option in other
modules by setting a <emphasis>priority</emphasis>. All option
definitions that do not have the lowest priority value are discarded.
By default, option definitions have priority 1000. You can specify an
explicit priority by using <varname>mkOverride</varname>, e.g.
<programlisting>
services.openssh.enable = mkOverride 10 false;
</programlisting>
This definition causes all other definitions with priorities above 10
to be discarded. The function <varname>mkForce</varname> is
equal to <varname>mkOverride 50</varname>.</para>
</simplesect>
<simplesect><title>Merging Configurations</title>
<para>In conjunction with <literal>mkIf</literal>, it is sometimes
useful for a module to return multiple sets of option definitions, to
be merged together as if they were declared in separate modules. This
can be done using <varname>mkMerge</varname>:
<programlisting>
config = mkMerge
[ # Unconditional stuff.
{ environment.systemPackages = [ <replaceable>...</replaceable> ];
}
# Conditional stuff.
(mkIf config.services.bla.enable {
environment.systemPackages = [ <replaceable>...</replaceable> ];
})
];
</programlisting>
</para>
</simplesect>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-running-nixos-tests">
<title>Running Tests</title>
<para>You can run tests using <command>nix-build</command>. For
example, to run the test <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/login.nix">login.nix</filename>,
you just do:
<screen>
$ nix-build '&lt;nixpkgs/nixos/tests/login.nix>'
</screen>
or, if you don’t want to rely on <envar>NIX_PATH</envar>:
<screen>
$ cd /my/nixpkgs/nixos/tests
$ nix-build login.nix
…
running the VM test script
machine: QEMU running (pid 8841)
…
6 out of 6 tests succeeded
</screen>
After building/downloading all required dependencies, this will
perform a build that starts a QEMU/KVM virtual machine containing a
NixOS system. The virtual machine mounts the Nix store of the host;
this makes VM creation very fast, as no disk image needs to be
created. Afterwards, you can view a pretty-printed log of the test:
<screen>
$ firefox result/log.html
</screen>
</para>
<para>It is also possible to run the test environment interactively,
allowing you to experiment with the VMs. For example:
<screen>
$ nix-build login.nix -A driver
$ ./result/bin/nixos-run-vms
</screen>
The script <command>nixos-run-vms</command> starts the virtual
machines defined by test. The root file system of the VMs is created
on the fly and kept across VM restarts in
<filename>./</filename><varname>hostname</varname><filename>.qcow2</filename>.</para>
<para>Finally, the test itself can be run interactively. This is
particularly useful when developing or debugging a test:
<screen>
$ nix-build tests/ -A nfs.driver
$ ./result/bin/nixos-test-driver
starting VDE switch for network 1
&gt;
</screen>
You can then take any Perl statement, e.g.
<screen>
&gt; startAll
&gt; $machine->succeed("touch /tmp/foo")
</screen>
The function <command>testScript</command> executes the entire test
script and drops you back into the test driver command line upon its
completion. This allows you to inspect the state of the VMs after the
test (e.g. to debug the test script).</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-getting-sources">
<title>Getting the Sources</title>
<para>By default, NixOS’s <command>nixos-rebuild</command> command
uses the NixOS and Nixpkgs sources provided by the
<literal>nixos-unstable</literal> channel (kept in
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos</filename>).
To modify NixOS, however, you should check out the latest sources from
Git. This is done using the following command:
<screen>
$ nixos-checkout <replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>
</screen>
or
<screen>
$ mkdir -p <replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>
$ cd <replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>
$ nix-env -i git
$ git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git
</screen>
This will check out the latest NixOS sources to
<filename><replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>/nixpkgs/nixos</filename>
and the Nixpkgs sources to
<filename><replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>/nixpkgs</filename>.
(The NixOS source tree lives in a subdirectory of the Nixpkgs
repository.)</para>
<para>It’s often inconvenient to develop directly on the master
branch, since if somebody has just committed (say) a change to GCC,
then the binary cache may not have caught up yet and you’ll have to
rebuild everything from source. So you may want to create a local
branch based on your current NixOS version:
<screen>
$ nixos-version
14.04.273.ea1952b (Baboon)
$ git checkout -b local ea1952b
</screen>
Or, to base your local branch on the latest version available in the
NixOS channel:
<screen>
$ curl -sI http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable/ | grep Location
Location: http://releases.nixos.org/nixos/unstable/nixos-14.10pre43986.acaf4a6/
$ git checkout -b local acaf4a6
</screen>
You can then use <command>git rebase</command> to sync your local
branch with the upstream branch, and use <command>git
cherry-pick</command> to copy commits from your local branch to the
upstream branch.</para>
<para>If you want to rebuild your system using your (modified)
sources, you need to tell <command>nixos-rebuild</command> about them
using the <option>-I</option> flag:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=<replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>/nixpkgs
</screen>
</para>
<para>If you want <command>nix-env</command> to use the expressions in
<replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>, use <command>nix-env -f
<replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>/nixpkgs</command>, or change
the default by adding a symlink in
<filename>~/.nix-defexpr</filename>:
<screen>
$ ln -s <replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable>/nixpkgs ~/.nix-defexpr/nixpkgs
</screen>
You may want to delete the symlink
<filename>~/.nix-defexpr/channels_root</filename> to prevent root’s
NixOS channel from clashing with your own tree.</para>
<!-- FIXME: not sure what this means.
<para>You should not pass the base directory
<filename><replaceable>/my/sources</replaceable></filename>
to <command>nix-env</command>, as it will break after interpreting expressions
in <filename>nixos/</filename> as packages.</para>
-->
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-testing-installer">
<title>Testing the Installer</title>
<para>Building, burning, and booting from an installation CD is rather
tedious, so here is a quick way to see if the installer works
properly:
<screen>
$ nix-build -A config.system.build.nixos-install
$ mount -t tmpfs none /mnt
$ ./result/bin/nixos-install</screen>
To start a login shell in the new NixOS installation in
<filename>/mnt</filename>:
<screen>
$ ./result/bin/nixos-install --chroot
</screen>
</para>
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-writing-modules">
<title>Writing NixOS Modules</title>
<para>NixOS has a modular system for declarative configuration. This
system combines multiple <emphasis>modules</emphasis> to produce the
full system configuration. One of the modules that constitute the
configuration is <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>.
Most of the others live in the <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/nixos/modules"><filename>nixos/modules</filename></link>
subdirectory of the Nixpkgs tree.</para>
<para>Each NixOS module is a file that handles one logical aspect of
the configuration, such as a specific kind of hardware, a service, or
network settings. A module configuration does not have to handle
everything from scratch; it can use the functionality provided by
other modules for its implementation. Thus a module can
<emphasis>declare</emphasis> options that can be used by other
modules, and conversely can <emphasis>define</emphasis> options
provided by other modules in its own implementation. For example, the
module <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/security/pam.nix"><filename>pam.nix</filename></link>
declares the option <option>security.pam.services</option> that allows
other modules (e.g. <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/networking/ssh/sshd.nix"><filename>sshd.nix</filename></link>)
to define PAM services; and it defines the option
<option>environment.etc</option> (declared by <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/system/etc/etc.nix"><filename>etc.nix</filename></link>)
to cause files to be created in
<filename>/etc/pam.d</filename>.</para>
<para xml:id="para-module-syn">In <xref
linkend="sec-configuration-syntax"/>, we saw the following structure
of NixOS modules:
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ <replaceable>option definitions</replaceable>
}
</programlisting>
This is actually an <emphasis>abbreviated</emphasis> form of module
that only defines options, but does not declare any. The structure of
full NixOS modules is shown in <xref linkend='ex-module-syntax' />.</para>
<example xml:id='ex-module-syntax'><title>Structure of NixOS Modules</title>
<programlisting>
{ config, pkgs, ... }: <co xml:id='module-syntax-1' />
{
imports =
[ <replaceable>paths of other modules</replaceable> <co xml:id='module-syntax-2' />
];
options = {
<replaceable>option declarations</replaceable> <co xml:id='module-syntax-3' />
};
config = {
<replaceable>option definitions</replaceable> <co xml:id='module-syntax-4' />
};
}</programlisting>
</example>
<para>The meaning of each part is as follows.
<calloutlist>
<callout arearefs='module-syntax-1'>
<para>This line makes the current Nix expression a function. The
variable <varname>pkgs</varname> contains Nixpkgs, while
<varname>config</varname> contains the full system configuration.
This line can be omitted if there is no reference to
<varname>pkgs</varname> and <varname>config</varname> inside the
module.</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs='module-syntax-2'>
<para>This list enumerates the paths to other NixOS modules that
should be included in the evaluation of the system configuration.
A default set of modules is defined in the file
<filename>modules/module-list.nix</filename>. These don't need to
be added in the import list.</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs='module-syntax-3'>
<para>The attribute <varname>options</varname> is a nested set of
<emphasis>option declarations</emphasis> (described below).</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs='module-syntax-4'>
<para>The attribute <varname>config</varname> is a nested set of
<emphasis>option definitions</emphasis> (also described
below).</para>
</callout>
</calloutlist>
</para>
<para><xref linkend='locate-example' /> shows a module that handles
the regular update of the “locate” database, an index of all files in
the file system. This module declares two options that can be defined
by other modules (typically the user’s
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>):
<option>services.locate.enable</option> (whether the database should
be updated) and <option>services.locate.period</option> (when the
update should be done). It implements its functionality by defining
two options declared by other modules:
<option>systemd.services</option> (the set of all systemd services)
and <option>services.cron.systemCronJobs</option> (the list of
commands to be executed periodically by <command>cron</command>).</para>
<example xml:id='locate-example'><title>NixOS Module for the “locate” Service</title>
<programlisting>
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
with lib;
let locatedb = "/var/cache/locatedb"; in
{
options = {
services.locate = {
enable = mkOption {
type = types.bool;
default = false;
description = ''
If enabled, NixOS will periodically update the database of
files used by the <command>locate</command> command.
'';
};
period = mkOption {
type = types.str;
default = "15 02 * * *";
description = ''
This option defines (in the format used by cron) when the
locate database is updated. The default is to update at
02:15 at night every day.
'';
};
};
};
config = {
systemd.services.update-locatedb =
{ description = "Update Locate Database";
path = [ pkgs.su ];
script =
''
mkdir -m 0755 -p $(dirname ${locatedb})
exec updatedb --localuser=nobody --output=${locatedb} --prunepaths='/tmp /var/tmp /media /run'
'';
};
services.cron.systemCronJobs = optional config.services.locate.enable
"${config.services.locate.period} root ${config.systemd.package}/bin/systemctl start update-locatedb.service";
};
}</programlisting>
</example>
<xi:include href="option-declarations.xml" />
<xi:include href="option-def.xml" />
</chapter>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-writing-nixos-tests">
<title>Writing Tests</title>
<para>A NixOS test is a Nix expression that has the following structure:
<programlisting>
import ./make-test.nix {
# Either the configuration of a single machine:
machine =
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{ <replaceable>configuration…</replaceable>
};
# Or a set of machines:
nodes =
{ <replaceable>machine1</replaceable> =
{ config, pkgs, ... }: { <replaceable>…</replaceable> };
<replaceable>machine2</replaceable> =
{ config, pkgs, ... }: { <replaceable>…</replaceable> };
…
};
testScript =
''
<replaceable>Perl code…</replaceable>
'';
}
</programlisting>
The attribute <literal>testScript</literal> is a bit of Perl code that
executes the test (described below). During the test, it will start
one or more virtual machines, the configuration of which is described
by the attribute <literal>machine</literal> (if you need only one
machine in your test) or by the attribute <literal>nodes</literal> (if
you need multiple machines). For instance, <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/login.nix">login.nix</filename>
only needs a single machine to test whether users can log in on the
virtual console, whether device ownership is correctly maintained when
switching between consoles, and so on. On the other hand, <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/nfs.nix">nfs.nix</filename>,
which tests NFS client and server functionality in the Linux kernel
(including whether locks are maintained across server crashes),
requires three machines: a server and two clients.</para>
<para>There are a few special NixOS configuration options for test
VMs:
<!-- FIXME: would be nice to generate this automatically. -->
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>virtualisation.memorySize</option></term>
<listitem><para>The memory of the VM in
megabytes.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>virtualisation.vlans</option></term>
<listitem><para>The virtual networks to which the VM is
connected. See <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/nat.nix">nat.nix</filename>
for an example.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>virtualisation.writableStore</option></term>
<listitem><para>By default, the Nix store in the VM is not
writable. If you enable this option, a writable union file system
is mounted on top of the Nix store to make it appear
writable. This is necessary for tests that run Nix operations that
modify the store.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
For more options, see the module <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/virtualisation/qemu-vm.nix">qemu-vm.nix</filename>.</para>
<para>The test script is a sequence of Perl statements that perform
various actions, such as starting VMs, executing commands in the VMs,
and so on. Each virtual machine is represented as an object stored in
the variable <literal>$<replaceable>name</replaceable></literal>,
where <replaceable>name</replaceable> is the identifier of the machine
(which is just <literal>machine</literal> if you didn’t specify
multiple machines using the <literal>nodes</literal> attribute). For
instance, the following starts the machine, waits until it has
finished booting, then executes a command and checks that the output
is more-or-less correct:
<programlisting>
$machine->start;
$machine->waitForUnit("default.target");
$machine->succeed("uname") =~ /Linux/;
</programlisting>
The first line is actually unnecessary; machines are implicitly
started when you first execute an action on them (such as
<literal>waitForUnit</literal> or <literal>succeed</literal>). If you
have multiple machines, you can speed up the test by starting them in
parallel:
<programlisting>
startAll;
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The following methods are available on machine objects:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>start</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Start the virtual machine. This method is
asynchronous — it does not wait for the machine to finish
booting.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>shutdown</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Shut down the machine, waiting for the VM to
exit.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>crash</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Simulate a sudden power failure, by telling the VM
to exit immediately.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>block</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Simulate unplugging the Ethernet cable that
connects the machine to the other machines.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>unblock</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Undo the effect of
<methodname>block</methodname>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>screenshot</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Take a picture of the display of the virtual
machine, in PNG format. The screenshot is linked from the HTML
log.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>sendMonitorCommand</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Send a command to the QEMU monitor. This is rarely
used, but allows doing stuff such as attaching virtual USB disks
to a running machine.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>sendKeys</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Simulate pressing keys on the virtual keyboard,
e.g., <literal>sendKeys("ctrl-alt-delete")</literal>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>sendChars</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Simulate typing a sequence of characters on the
virtual keyboard, e.g., <literal>sendKeys("foobar\n")</literal>
will type the string <literal>foobar</literal> followed by the
Enter key.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>execute</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Execute a shell command, returning a list
<literal>(<replaceable>status</replaceable>,
<replaceable>stdout</replaceable>)</literal>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>succeed</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Execute a shell command, raising an exception if
the exit status is not zero, otherwise returning the standard
output.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>fail</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Like <methodname>succeed</methodname>, but raising
an exception if the command returns a zero status.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitUntilSucceeds</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Repeat a shell command with 1-second intervals
until it succeeds.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitUntilFails</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Repeat a shell command with 1-second intervals
until it fails.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForUnit</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until the specified systemd unit has reached
the “active” state.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForFile</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until the specified file
exists.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForOpenPort</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until a process is listening on the given TCP
port (on <literal>localhost</literal>, at least).</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForClosedPort</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until nobody is listening on the given TCP
port.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForX</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until the X11 server is accepting
connections.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><methodname>waitForWindow</methodname></term>
<listitem><para>Wait until an X11 window has appeared whose name
matches the given regular expression, e.g.,
<literal>waitForWindow(qr/Terminal/)</literal>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</section>

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@ -1,570 +0,0 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="ch-installation">
<title>Installing NixOS</title>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-obtaining">
<title>Obtaining NixOS</title>
<para>NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
homepage</link>. These can be burned onto a CD. It is also possible
to copy them onto a USB stick and install NixOS from there. For
details, see the <link
xlink:href="https://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_NixOS_from_a_USB_stick">NixOS
Wiki</link>.</para>
<para>As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a
running NixOS system through several other means:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
that can be imported into VirtualBox. These are available from
the <link xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
homepage</link>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Using AMIs for Amazon’s EC2. To find one for your region
and instance type, please refer to the <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/blob/master/nix/ec2-amis.nix">list
of most recent AMIs</link>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which
allows you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from
declarative specifications. Check out the <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixops">NixOps
homepage</link> for details.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-installation">
<title>Installation</title>
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>Boot from the CD.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The CD contains a basic NixOS installation. (It
also contains Memtest86+, useful if you want to test new hardware.)
When it’s finished booting, it should have detected most of your
hardware and brought up networking (check
<command>ifconfig</command>). Networking is necessary for the
installer, since it will download lots of stuff (such as source
tarballs or Nixpkgs channel binaries). It’s best if you have a DHCP
server on your network. Otherwise configure networking manually
using <command>ifconfig</command>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The NixOS manual is available on virtual console 8
(press Alt+F8 to access).</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Login as <literal>root</literal> and the empty
password.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>If you downloaded the graphical ISO image, you can
run <command>start display-manager</command> to start KDE.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The NixOS installer doesn’t do any partitioning or
formatting yet, so you need to that yourself. Use the following
commands:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>For partitioning:
<command>fdisk</command>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For initialising Ext4 partitions:
<command>mkfs.ext4</command>. It is recommended that you assign a
unique symbolic label to the file system using the option
<option>-L <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>, since this
makes the file system configuration independent from device
changes. For example:
<screen>
$ mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating swap partitions:
<command>mkswap</command>. Again it’s recommended to assign a
label to the swap partition: <option>-L
<replaceable>label</replaceable></option>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating LVM volumes, the LVM commands, e.g.,
<screen>
$ pvcreate /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ vgcreate MyVolGroup /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ lvcreate --size 2G --name bigdisk MyVolGroup
$ lvcreate --size 1G --name smalldisk MyVolGroup</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating software RAID devices, use
<command>mdadm</command>.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Mount the target file system on which NixOS should
be installed on <filename>/mnt</filename>, e.g.
<screen>
$ mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>If your machine has a limited amount of memory, you
may want to activate swap devices now (<command>swapon
<replaceable>device</replaceable></command>). The installer (or
rather, the build actions that it may spawn) may need quite a bit of
RAM, depending on your configuration.</para></listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You now need to create a file
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> that
specifies the intended configuration of the system. This is
because NixOS has a <emphasis>declarative</emphasis> configuration
model: you create or edit a description of the desired
configuration of your system, and then NixOS takes care of making
it happen. The syntax of the NixOS configuration file is
described in <xref linkend="sec-configuration-syntax"/>, while a
list of available configuration options appears in <xref
linkend="ch-options"/>. A minimal example is shown in <xref
linkend="ex-config"/>.</para>
<para>The command <command>nixos-generate-config</command> can
generate an initial configuration file for you:
<screen>
$ nixos-generate-config --root /mnt</screen>
You should then edit
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> to suit your
needs:
<screen>
$ nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
</screen>
The <command>vim</command> text editor is also available.</para>
<para>You <emphasis>must</emphasis> set the option
<option>boot.loader.grub.device</option> to specify on which disk
the GRUB boot loader is to be installed. Without it, NixOS cannot
boot.</para>
<para>Another critical option is <option>fileSystems</option>,
specifying the file systems that need to be mounted by NixOS.
However, you typically don’t need to set it yourself, because
<command>nixos-generate-config</command> sets it automatically in
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix</filename>
from your currently mounted file systems. (The configuration file
<filename>hardware-configuration.nix</filename> is included from
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> and will be overwritten by
future invocations of <command>nixos-generate-config</command>;
thus, you generally should not modify it.)</para>
<note><para>Depending on your hardware configuration or type of
file system, you may need to set the option
<option>boot.initrd.kernelModules</option> to include the kernel
modules that are necessary for mounting the root file system,
otherwise the installed system will not be able to boot. (If this
happens, boot from the CD again, mount the target file system on
<filename>/mnt</filename>, fix
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> and rerun
<filename>nixos-install</filename>.) In most cases,
<command>nixos-generate-config</command> will figure out the
required modules.</para></note>
<para>Examples of real-world NixOS configuration files can be
found at <link
xlink:href="https://nixos.org/repos/nix/configurations/trunk/"/>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>Do the installation:
<screen>
$ nixos-install</screen>
Cross fingers. If this fails due to a temporary problem (such as
a network issue while downloading binaries from the NixOS binary
cache), you can just re-run <command>nixos-install</command>.
Otherwise, fix your <filename>configuration.nix</filename> and
then re-run <command>nixos-install</command>.</para>
<para>As the last step, <command>nixos-install</command> will ask
you to set the password for the <literal>root</literal> user, e.g.
<screen>
setting root password...
Enter new UNIX password: ***
Retype new UNIX password: ***
</screen>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>If everything went well:
<screen>
$ reboot</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You should now be able to boot into the installed NixOS.
The GRUB boot menu shows a list of <emphasis>available
configurations</emphasis> (initially just one). Every time you
change the NixOS configuration (see <xref
linkend="sec-changing-config" />), a new item appears in the menu.
This allows you to easily roll back to another configuration if
something goes wrong.</para>
<para>You should log in and change the <literal>root</literal>
password with <command>passwd</command>.</para>
<para>You’ll probably want to create some user accounts as well,
which can be done with <command>useradd</command>:
<screen>
$ useradd -c 'Eelco Dolstra' -m eelco
$ passwd eelco</screen>
</para>
<para>You may also want to install some software. For instance,
<screen>
$ nix-env -qa \*</screen>
shows what packages are available, and
<screen>
$ nix-env -i w3m</screen>
install the <literal>w3m</literal> browser.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>To summarise, <xref linkend="ex-install-sequence" /> shows a
typical sequence of commands for installing NixOS on an empty hard
drive (here <filename>/dev/sda</filename>). <xref linkend="ex-config"
/> shows a corresponding configuration Nix expression.</para>
<example xml:id='ex-install-sequence'><title>Commands for installing NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename></title>
<screen>
$ fdisk /dev/sda # <lineannotation>(or whatever device you want to install on)</lineannotation>
$ mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1
$ mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
$ swapon /dev/sda2
$ mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
$ nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
$ nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
$ nixos-install
$ reboot</screen>
</example>
<example xml:id='ex-config'><title>NixOS configuration</title>
<screen>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports =
[ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
./hardware-configuration.nix
];
boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";
# Note: setting fileSystems is generally not
# necessary, since nixos-generate-config figures them out
# automatically in hardware-configuration.nix.
#fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";
# Enable the OpenSSH server.
services.sshd.enable = true;
}</screen>
</example>
<section xml:id="sec-uefi-installation">
<title>UEFI Installation</title>
<para>NixOS can also be installed on UEFI systems. The procedure
is by and large the same as a BIOS installation, with the following
changes:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>You should boot the live CD in UEFI mode (consult your
specific hardware's documentation for instructions). You may find
the <link
xlink:href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind">rEFInd
boot manager</link> useful.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Instead of <command>fdisk</command>, you should use
<command>gdisk</command> to partition your disks. You will need to
have a separate partition for <filename>/boot</filename> with
partition code EF00, and it should be formatted as a
<literal>vfat</literal> filesystem.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You must set <option>boot.loader.gummiboot.enable</option> to
<literal>true</literal>. <command>nixos-generate-config</command>
should do this automatically for new configurations when booted in
UEFI mode.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>After having mounted your installation partition to
<code>/mnt</code>, you must mount the <code>boot</code> partition
to <code>/mnt/boot</code>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You may want to look at the options starting with
<option>boot.loader.efi</option> and <option>boot.loader.gummiboot</option>
as well.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>To see console messages during early boot, add <literal>"fbcon"</literal>
to your <option>boot.initrd.kernelModules</option>.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">Booting from a USB stick</title>
<para>For systems without CD drive, the NixOS livecd can be booted from
a usb stick. For non-UEFI installations,
<link xlink:href="http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/">unetbootin</link>
will work. For UEFI installations, you should mount the ISO, copy its contents
verbatim to your drive, then either:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO
(visible with the blkid command), or</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Edit <filename>loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf</filename> on the drive
and change the <literal>root=</literal> field in the <literal>options</literal>
line to point to your drive (see the documentation on <literal>root=</literal>
in <link xlink:href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt">
the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-changing-config">
<title>Changing the configuration</title>
<para>The file <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>
contains the current configuration of your machine. Whenever you’ve
changed something to that file, you should do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch</screen>
to build the new configuration, make it the default configuration for
booting, and try to realise the configuration in the running system
(e.g., by restarting system services).</para>
<warning><para>These commands must be executed as root, so you should
either run them from a root shell or by prefixing them with
<literal>sudo -i</literal>.</para></warning>
<para>You can also do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild test</screen>
to build the configuration and switch the running system to it, but
without making it the boot default. So if (say) the configuration
locks up your machine, you can just reboot to get back to a working
configuration.</para>
<para>There is also
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild boot</screen>
to build the configuration and make it the boot default, but not
switch to it now (so it will only take effect after the next
reboot).</para>
<para>You can make your configuration show up in a different submenu
of the GRUB 2 boot screen by giving it a different <emphasis>profile
name</emphasis>, e.g.
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -p test </screen>
which causes the new configuration (and previous ones created using
<literal>-p test</literal>) to show up in the GRUB submenu “NixOS -
Profile 'test'”. This can be useful to separate test configurations
from “stable” configurations.</para>
<para>Finally, you can do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild build</screen>
to build the configuration but nothing more. This is useful to see
whether everything compiles cleanly.</para>
<para>If you have a machine that supports hardware virtualisation, you
can also test the new configuration in a sandbox by building and
running a QEMU <emphasis>virtual machine</emphasis> that contains the
desired configuration. Just do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild build-vm
$ ./result/bin/run-*-vm
</screen>
The VM does not have any data from your host system, so your existing
user accounts and home directories will not be available. You can
forward ports on the host to the guest. For instance, the following
will forward host port 2222 to guest port 22 (SSH):
<screen>
$ QEMU_NET_OPTS="hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22" ./result/bin/run-*-vm
</screen>
allowing you to log in via SSH (assuming you have set the appropriate
passwords or SSH authorized keys):
<screen>
$ ssh -p 2222 localhost
</screen>
</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-upgrading">
<title>Upgrading NixOS</title>
<para>The best way to keep your NixOS installation up to date is to
use one of the NixOS <emphasis>channels</emphasis>. A channel is a
Nix mechanism for distributing Nix expressions and associated
binaries. The NixOS channels are updated automatically from NixOS’s
Git repository after certain tests have passed and all packages have
been built. These channels are:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Stable channels, such as <literal
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04">nixos-14.04</literal>.
These only get conservative bug fixes and package upgrades. For
instance, a channel update may cause the Linux kernel on your
system to be upgraded from 3.4.66 to 3.4.67 (a minor bug fix), but
not from 3.4.<replaceable>x</replaceable> to
3.11.<replaceable>x</replaceable> (a major change that has the
potential to break things). Stable channels are generally
maintained until the next stable branch is created.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The unstable channel, <literal
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable">nixos-unstable</literal>.
This corresponds to NixOS’s main development branch, and may thus
see radical changes between channel updates. It’s not recommended
for production systems.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
To see what channels are available, go to <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels"/>. (Note that the URIs of the
various channels redirect to a directory that contains the channel’s
latest version and includes ISO images and VirtualBox
appliances.)</para>
<para>When you first install NixOS, you’re automatically subscribed to
the NixOS channel that corresponds to your installation source. For
instance, if you installed from a 14.04 ISO, you will be subscribed to
the <literal>nixos-14.04</literal> channel. To see which NixOS
channel you’re subscribed to, run the following as root:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --list | grep nixos
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable
</screen>
To switch to a different NixOS channel, do
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/<replaceable>channel-name</replaceable> nixos
</screen>
(Be sure to include the <literal>nixos</literal> parameter at the
end.) For instance, to use the NixOS 14.04 stable channel:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04 nixos
</screen>
But it you want to live on the bleeding edge:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos
</screen>
</para>
<para>You can then upgrade NixOS to the latest version in your chosen
channel by running
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
</screen>
which is equivalent to the more verbose <literal>nix-channel --update
nixos; nixos-rebuild switch</literal>.</para>
<warning><para>It is generally safe to switch back and forth between
channels. The only exception is that a newer NixOS may also have a
newer Nix version, which may involve an upgrade of Nix’s database
schema. This cannot be undone easily, so in that case you will not be
able to go back to your original channel.</para></warning>
</section>
</chapter>

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@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-changing-config">
<title>Changing the Configuration</title>
<para>The file <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>
contains the current configuration of your machine. Whenever you’ve
changed something to that file, you should do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch</screen>
to build the new configuration, make it the default configuration for
booting, and try to realise the configuration in the running system
(e.g., by restarting system services).</para>
<warning><para>These commands must be executed as root, so you should
either run them from a root shell or by prefixing them with
<literal>sudo -i</literal>.</para></warning>
<para>You can also do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild test</screen>
to build the configuration and switch the running system to it, but
without making it the boot default. So if (say) the configuration
locks up your machine, you can just reboot to get back to a working
configuration.</para>
<para>There is also
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild boot</screen>
to build the configuration and make it the boot default, but not
switch to it now (so it will only take effect after the next
reboot).</para>
<para>You can make your configuration show up in a different submenu
of the GRUB 2 boot screen by giving it a different <emphasis>profile
name</emphasis>, e.g.
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -p test </screen>
which causes the new configuration (and previous ones created using
<literal>-p test</literal>) to show up in the GRUB submenu “NixOS -
Profile 'test'”. This can be useful to separate test configurations
from “stable” configurations.</para>
<para>Finally, you can do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild build</screen>
to build the configuration but nothing more. This is useful to see
whether everything compiles cleanly.</para>
<para>If you have a machine that supports hardware virtualisation, you
can also test the new configuration in a sandbox by building and
running a QEMU <emphasis>virtual machine</emphasis> that contains the
desired configuration. Just do
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild build-vm
$ ./result/bin/run-*-vm
</screen>
The VM does not have any data from your host system, so your existing
user accounts and home directories will not be available. You can
forward ports on the host to the guest. For instance, the following
will forward host port 2222 to guest port 22 (SSH):
<screen>
$ QEMU_NET_OPTS="hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22" ./result/bin/run-*-vm
</screen>
allowing you to log in via SSH (assuming you have set the appropriate
passwords or SSH authorized keys):
<screen>
$ ssh -p 2222 localhost
</screen>
</para>
</chapter>

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<part xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-installation">
<title>Installation</title>
<partintro>
<para>This section describes how to obtain, install, and configure
NixOS for first-time use.</para>
</partintro>
<xi:include href="obtaining.xml" />
<xi:include href="installing.xml" />
<xi:include href="changing-config.xml" />
<xi:include href="upgrading.xml" />
</part>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-uefi-installation">
<title>UEFI Installation</title>
<para>NixOS can also be installed on UEFI systems. The procedure
is by and large the same as a BIOS installation, with the following
changes:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>You should boot the live CD in UEFI mode (consult your
specific hardware's documentation for instructions). You may find
the <link
xlink:href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind">rEFInd
boot manager</link> useful.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Instead of <command>fdisk</command>, you should use
<command>gdisk</command> to partition your disks. You will need to
have a separate partition for <filename>/boot</filename> with
partition code EF00, and it should be formatted as a
<literal>vfat</literal> filesystem.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You must set <option>boot.loader.gummiboot.enable</option> to
<literal>true</literal>. <command>nixos-generate-config</command>
should do this automatically for new configurations when booted in
UEFI mode.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>After having mounted your installation partition to
<code>/mnt</code>, you must mount the <code>boot</code> partition
to <code>/mnt/boot</code>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You may want to look at the options starting with
<option>boot.loader.efi</option> and <option>boot.loader.gummiboot</option>
as well.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>To see console messages during early boot, add <literal>"fbcon"</literal>
to your <option>boot.initrd.kernelModules</option>.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>

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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">
<title>Booting from a USB Drive</title>
<para>For systems without CD drive, the NixOS livecd can be booted from
a usb stick. For non-UEFI installations,
<link xlink:href="http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/">unetbootin</link>
will work. For UEFI installations, you should mount the ISO, copy its contents
verbatim to your drive, then either:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO
(visible with the blkid command), or</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Edit <filename>loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf</filename> on the drive
and change the <literal>root=</literal> field in the <literal>options</literal>
line to point to your drive (see the documentation on <literal>root=</literal>
in <link xlink:href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt">
the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-installation">
<title>Installing NixOS</title>
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>Boot from the CD.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The CD contains a basic NixOS installation. (It
also contains Memtest86+, useful if you want to test new hardware.)
When it’s finished booting, it should have detected most of your
hardware and brought up networking (check
<command>ifconfig</command>). Networking is necessary for the
installer, since it will download lots of stuff (such as source
tarballs or Nixpkgs channel binaries). It’s best if you have a DHCP
server on your network. Otherwise configure networking manually
using <command>ifconfig</command>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The NixOS manual is available on virtual console 8
(press Alt+F8 to access).</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Login as <literal>root</literal> and the empty
password.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>If you downloaded the graphical ISO image, you can
run <command>start display-manager</command> to start KDE.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The NixOS installer doesn’t do any partitioning or
formatting yet, so you need to that yourself. Use the following
commands:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>For partitioning:
<command>fdisk</command>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For initialising Ext4 partitions:
<command>mkfs.ext4</command>. It is recommended that you assign a
unique symbolic label to the file system using the option
<option>-L <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>, since this
makes the file system configuration independent from device
changes. For example:
<screen>
$ mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating swap partitions:
<command>mkswap</command>. Again it’s recommended to assign a
label to the swap partition: <option>-L
<replaceable>label</replaceable></option>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating LVM volumes, the LVM commands, e.g.,
<screen>
$ pvcreate /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ vgcreate MyVolGroup /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ lvcreate --size 2G --name bigdisk MyVolGroup
$ lvcreate --size 1G --name smalldisk MyVolGroup</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>For creating software RAID devices, use
<command>mdadm</command>.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Mount the target file system on which NixOS should
be installed on <filename>/mnt</filename>, e.g.
<screen>
$ mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>If your machine has a limited amount of memory, you
may want to activate swap devices now (<command>swapon
<replaceable>device</replaceable></command>). The installer (or
rather, the build actions that it may spawn) may need quite a bit of
RAM, depending on your configuration.</para></listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You now need to create a file
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> that
specifies the intended configuration of the system. This is
because NixOS has a <emphasis>declarative</emphasis> configuration
model: you create or edit a description of the desired
configuration of your system, and then NixOS takes care of making
it happen. The syntax of the NixOS configuration file is
described in <xref linkend="sec-configuration-syntax"/>, while a
list of available configuration options appears in <xref
linkend="ch-options"/>. A minimal example is shown in <xref
linkend="ex-config"/>.</para>
<para>The command <command>nixos-generate-config</command> can
generate an initial configuration file for you:
<screen>
$ nixos-generate-config --root /mnt</screen>
You should then edit
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> to suit your
needs:
<screen>
$ nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
</screen>
The <command>vim</command> text editor is also available.</para>
<para>You <emphasis>must</emphasis> set the option
<option>boot.loader.grub.device</option> to specify on which disk
the GRUB boot loader is to be installed. Without it, NixOS cannot
boot.</para>
<para>Another critical option is <option>fileSystems</option>,
specifying the file systems that need to be mounted by NixOS.
However, you typically don’t need to set it yourself, because
<command>nixos-generate-config</command> sets it automatically in
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix</filename>
from your currently mounted file systems. (The configuration file
<filename>hardware-configuration.nix</filename> is included from
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> and will be overwritten by
future invocations of <command>nixos-generate-config</command>;
thus, you generally should not modify it.)</para>
<note><para>Depending on your hardware configuration or type of
file system, you may need to set the option
<option>boot.initrd.kernelModules</option> to include the kernel
modules that are necessary for mounting the root file system,
otherwise the installed system will not be able to boot. (If this
happens, boot from the CD again, mount the target file system on
<filename>/mnt</filename>, fix
<filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> and rerun
<filename>nixos-install</filename>.) In most cases,
<command>nixos-generate-config</command> will figure out the
required modules.</para></note>
<para>Examples of real-world NixOS configuration files can be
found at <link
xlink:href="https://nixos.org/repos/nix/configurations/trunk/"/>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>Do the installation:
<screen>
$ nixos-install</screen>
Cross fingers. If this fails due to a temporary problem (such as
a network issue while downloading binaries from the NixOS binary
cache), you can just re-run <command>nixos-install</command>.
Otherwise, fix your <filename>configuration.nix</filename> and
then re-run <command>nixos-install</command>.</para>
<para>As the last step, <command>nixos-install</command> will ask
you to set the password for the <literal>root</literal> user, e.g.
<screen>
setting root password...
Enter new UNIX password: ***
Retype new UNIX password: ***
</screen>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>If everything went well:
<screen>
$ reboot</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem>
<para>You should now be able to boot into the installed NixOS. The GRUB boot menu shows a list
of <emphasis>available configurations</emphasis> (initially just one). Every time
you change the NixOS configuration (see<link linkend="sec-changing-config">Changing
Configuration</link> ), a new item appears in the menu. This allows you to
easily roll back to another configuration if something goes wrong.</para>
<para>You should log in and change the <literal>root</literal>
password with <command>passwd</command>.</para>
<para>You’ll probably want to create some user accounts as well,
which can be done with <command>useradd</command>:
<screen>
$ useradd -c 'Eelco Dolstra' -m eelco
$ passwd eelco</screen>
</para>
<para>You may also want to install some software. For instance,
<screen>
$ nix-env -qa \*</screen>
shows what packages are available, and
<screen>
$ nix-env -i w3m</screen>
install the <literal>w3m</literal> browser.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>To summarise, <xref linkend="ex-install-sequence" /> shows a
typical sequence of commands for installing NixOS on an empty hard
drive (here <filename>/dev/sda</filename>). <xref linkend="ex-config"
/> shows a corresponding configuration Nix expression.</para>
<example xml:id='ex-install-sequence'><title>Commands for Installing NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename></title>
<screen>
$ fdisk /dev/sda # <lineannotation>(or whatever device you want to install on)</lineannotation>
$ mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1
$ mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
$ swapon /dev/sda2
$ mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
$ nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
$ nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
$ nixos-install
$ reboot</screen>
</example>
<example xml:id='ex-config'><title>NixOS Configuration</title>
<screen>
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports =
[ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
./hardware-configuration.nix
];
boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";
# Note: setting fileSystems is generally not
# necessary, since nixos-generate-config figures them out
# automatically in hardware-configuration.nix.
#fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";
# Enable the OpenSSH server.
services.sshd.enable = true;
}</screen>
</example>
<xi:include href="installing-UEFI.xml" />
<xi:include href="installing-USB.xml" />
</chapter>

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-obtaining">
<title>Obtaining NixOS</title>
<para>NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
homepage</link>. These can be burned onto a CD. It is also possible
to copy them onto a USB stick and install NixOS from there. For
details, see the <link
xlink:href="https://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_NixOS_from_a_USB_stick">NixOS
Wiki</link>.</para>
<para>As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a
running NixOS system through several other means:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
that can be imported into VirtualBox. These are available from
the <link xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
homepage</link>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Using AMIs for Amazon’s EC2. To find one for your region
and instance type, please refer to the <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/blob/master/nix/ec2-amis.nix">list
of most recent AMIs</link>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which
allows you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from
declarative specifications. Check out the <link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixops">NixOps
homepage</link> for details.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</chapter>

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@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-upgrading">
<title>Upgrading NixOS</title>
<para>The best way to keep your NixOS installation up to date is to
use one of the NixOS <emphasis>channels</emphasis>. A channel is a
Nix mechanism for distributing Nix expressions and associated
binaries. The NixOS channels are updated automatically from NixOS’s
Git repository after certain tests have passed and all packages have
been built. These channels are:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Stable channels, such as <literal
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04">nixos-14.04</literal>.
These only get conservative bug fixes and package upgrades. For
instance, a channel update may cause the Linux kernel on your
system to be upgraded from 3.4.66 to 3.4.67 (a minor bug fix), but
not from 3.4.<replaceable>x</replaceable> to
3.11.<replaceable>x</replaceable> (a major change that has the
potential to break things). Stable channels are generally
maintained until the next stable branch is created.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The unstable channel, <literal
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable">nixos-unstable</literal>.
This corresponds to NixOS’s main development branch, and may thus
see radical changes between channel updates. It’s not recommended
for production systems.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
To see what channels are available, go to <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/channels"/>. (Note that the URIs of the
various channels redirect to a directory that contains the channel’s
latest version and includes ISO images and VirtualBox
appliances.)</para>
<para>When you first install NixOS, you’re automatically subscribed to
the NixOS channel that corresponds to your installation source. For
instance, if you installed from a 14.04 ISO, you will be subscribed to
the <literal>nixos-14.04</literal> channel. To see which NixOS
channel you’re subscribed to, run the following as root:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --list | grep nixos
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable
</screen>
To switch to a different NixOS channel, do
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/<replaceable>channel-name</replaceable> nixos
</screen>
(Be sure to include the <literal>nixos</literal> parameter at the
end.) For instance, to use the NixOS 14.04 stable channel:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04 nixos
</screen>
But it you want to live on the bleeding edge:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos
</screen>
</para>
<para>You can then upgrade NixOS to the latest version in your chosen
channel by running
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
</screen>
which is equivalent to the more verbose <literal>nix-channel --update
nixos; nixos-rebuild switch</literal>.</para>
<warning><para>It is generally safe to switch back and forth between
channels. The only exception is that a newer NixOS may also have a
newer Nix version, which may involve an upgrade of Nix’s database
schema. This cannot be undone easily, so in that case you will not be
able to go back to your original channel.</para></warning>
</chapter>

24
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@ -1,15 +1,14 @@
<book xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="NixOSManual">
<info>
<title>NixOS Manual</title>
<subtitle>Version <xi:include href="version" parse="text" /></subtitle>
</info>
<preface>
<title>Preface</title>
@ -29,19 +28,14 @@
</preface>
<xi:include href="installation.xml" />
<xi:include href="configuration.xml" />
<xi:include href="running.xml" />
<xi:include href="installation/installation.xml" />
<xi:include href="configuration/configuration.xml" />
<xi:include href="administration/running.xml" />
<!-- <xi:include href="userconfiguration.xml" /> -->
<xi:include href="troubleshooting.xml" />
<xi:include href="containers.xml" />
<xi:include href="development.xml" />
<xi:include href="release-notes.xml" />
<xi:include href="release-notes/release-notes.xml" />
<appendix xml:id="ch-options">
<title>Configuration options</title>
<title>Configuration Options</title>
<xi:include href="options-db.xml" />
</appendix>

17
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@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
<part xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="ch-release-notes">
<title>Release Notes</title>
<partintro>
<para>This section lists the release notes for each stable version of NixOS.</para>
</partintro>
<xi:include href="rl-1410.xml" />
<xi:include href="rl-1404.xml" />
<xi:include href="rl-1310.xml" />
</part>

11
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@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-release-13.10">
<title>Release 13.10 (“Aardvark”, 2013/10/31)</title>
<para>This is the first stable release branch of NixOS.</para>
</chapter>

50
nixos/doc/manual/release-notes.xml → nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1404.xml
View File

@ -1,34 +1,8 @@
<appendix xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="ch-release-notes">
<title>Release notes</title>
<!--==================================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-release-14.10">
<title>Release 14.10 (“Caterpillar”, 2014/10/??)</title>
<para>When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the
following incompatible changes:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair
is now called <literal>ve-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>
rather than <literal>c-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
<!--==================================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-release-14.04">
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-release-14.04">
<title>Release 14.04 (“Baboon”, 2014/04/30)</title>
@ -183,16 +157,4 @@ networking.firewall.enable = false;
</para>
</section>
<!--==================================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-release-13.10">
<title>Release 13.10 (“Aardvark”, 2013/10/31)</title>
<para>This is the first stable release branch of NixOS.</para>
</section>
</appendix>
</chapter>

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@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-release-14.10">
<title>Release 14.10 (“Caterpillar”, 2014/10/??)</title>
<para>When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the
following incompatible changes:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair
is now called <literal>ve-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>
rather than <literal>c-<replaceable>container-name</replaceable></literal>.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</chapter>

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@ -1,369 +0,0 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="ch-running">
<title>Running NixOS</title>
<para>This chapter describes various aspects of managing a running
NixOS system, such as how to use the <command>systemd</command>
service manager.</para>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-systemctl"><title>Service management</title>
<para>In NixOS, all system services are started and monitored using
the systemd program. Systemd is the “init” process of the system
(i.e. PID 1), the parent of all other processes. It manages a set of
so-called “units”, which can be things like system services
(programs), but also mount points, swap files, devices, targets
(groups of units) and more. Units can have complex dependencies; for
instance, one unit can require that another unit must be successfully
started before the first unit can be started. When the system boots,
it starts a unit named <literal>default.target</literal>; the
dependencies of this unit cause all system services to be started,
file systems to be mounted, swap files to be activated, and so
on.</para>
<para>The command <command>systemctl</command> is the main way to
interact with <command>systemd</command>. Without any arguments, it
shows the status of active units:
<screen>
$ systemctl
-.mount loaded active mounted /
swapfile.swap loaded active active /swapfile
sshd.service loaded active running SSH Daemon
graphical.target loaded active active Graphical Interface
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
</para>
<para>You can ask for detailed status information about a unit, for
instance, the PostgreSQL database service:
<screen>
$ systemctl status postgresql.service
postgresql.service - PostgreSQL Server
Loaded: loaded (/nix/store/pn3q73mvh75gsrl8w7fdlfk3fq5qm5mw-unit/postgresql.service)
Active: active (running) since Mon, 2013-01-07 15:55:57 CET; 9h ago
Main PID: 2390 (postgres)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/postgresql.service
├─2390 postgres
├─2418 postgres: writer process
├─2419 postgres: wal writer process
├─2420 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
├─2421 postgres: stats collector process
└─2498 postgres: zabbix zabbix [local] idle
Jan 07 15:55:55 hagbard postgres[2394]: [1-1] LOG: database system was shut down at 2013-01-07 15:55:05 CET
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard postgres[2390]: [1-1] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard postgres[2420]: [1-1] LOG: autovacuum launcher started
Jan 07 15:55:57 hagbard systemd[1]: Started PostgreSQL Server.
</screen>
Note that this shows the status of the unit (active and running), all
the processes belonging to the service, as well as the most recent log
messages from the service.
</para>
<para>Units can be stopped, started or restarted:
<screen>
$ systemctl stop postgresql.service
$ systemctl start postgresql.service
$ systemctl restart postgresql.service
</screen>
These operations are synchronous: they wait until the service has
finished starting or stopping (or has failed). Starting a unit will
cause the dependencies of that unit to be started as well (if
necessary).</para>
<!-- - cgroups: each service and user session is a cgroup
- cgroup resource management -->
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-rebooting"><title>Rebooting and shutting down</title>
<para>The system can be shut down (and automatically powered off) by
doing:
<screen>
$ shutdown
</screen>
This is equivalent to running <command>systemctl
poweroff</command>.</para>
<para>To reboot the system, run
<screen>
$ reboot
</screen>
which is equivalent to <command>systemctl reboot</command>.
Alternatively, you can quickly reboot the system using
<literal>kexec</literal>, which bypasses the BIOS by directly loading
the new kernel into memory:
<screen>
$ systemctl kexec
</screen>
</para>
<para>The machine can be suspended to RAM (if supported) using
<command>systemctl suspend</command>, and suspended to disk using
<command>systemctl hibernate</command>.</para>
<para>These commands can be run by any user who is logged in locally,
i.e. on a virtual console or in X11; otherwise, the user is asked for
authentication.</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-user-sessions"><title>User sessions</title>
<para>Systemd keeps track of all users who are logged into the system
(e.g. on a virtual console or remotely via SSH). The command
<command>loginctl</command> allows querying and manipulating user
sessions. For instance, to list all user sessions:
<screen>
$ loginctl
SESSION UID USER SEAT
c1 500 eelco seat0
c3 0 root seat0
c4 500 alice
</screen>
This shows that two users are logged in locally, while another is
logged in remotely. (“Seats” are essentially the combinations of
displays and input devices attached to the system; usually, there is
only one seat.) To get information about a session:
<screen>
$ loginctl session-status c3
c3 - root (0)
Since: Tue, 2013-01-08 01:17:56 CET; 4min 42s ago
Leader: 2536 (login)
Seat: seat0; vc3
TTY: /dev/tty3
Service: login; type tty; class user
State: online
CGroup: name=systemd:/user/root/c3
├─ 2536 /nix/store/10mn4xip9n7y9bxqwnsx7xwx2v2g34xn-shadow-4.1.5.1/bin/login --
├─10339 -bash
└─10355 w3m nixos.org
</screen>
This shows that the user is logged in on virtual console 3. It also
lists the processes belonging to this session. Since systemd keeps
track of this, you can terminate a session in a way that ensures that
all the session’s processes are gone:
<screen>
$ loginctl terminate-session c3
</screen>
</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-cgroups"><title>Control groups</title>
<para>To keep track of the processes in a running system, systemd uses
<emphasis>control groups</emphasis> (cgroups). A control group is a
set of processes used to allocate resources such as CPU, memory or I/O
bandwidth. There can be multiple control group hierarchies, allowing
each kind of resource to be managed independently.</para>
<para>The command <command>systemd-cgls</command> lists all control
groups in the <literal>systemd</literal> hierarchy, which is what
systemd uses to keep track of the processes belonging to each service
or user session:
<screen>
$ systemd-cgls
├─user
│ └─eelco
│ └─c1
│ ├─ 2567 -:0
│ ├─ 2682 kdeinit4: kdeinit4 Running...
│ ├─ <replaceable>...</replaceable>
│ └─10851 sh -c less -R
└─system
├─httpd.service
│ ├─2444 httpd -f /nix/store/3pyacby5cpr55a03qwbnndizpciwq161-httpd.conf -DNO_DETACH
│ └─<replaceable>...</replaceable>
├─dhcpcd.service
│ └─2376 dhcpcd --config /nix/store/f8dif8dsi2yaa70n03xir8r653776ka6-dhcpcd.conf
└─ <replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
Similarly, <command>systemd-cgls cpu</command> shows the cgroups in
the CPU hierarchy, which allows per-cgroup CPU scheduling priorities.
By default, every systemd service gets its own CPU cgroup, while all
user sessions are in the top-level CPU cgroup. This ensures, for
instance, that a thousand run-away processes in the
<literal>httpd.service</literal> cgroup cannot starve the CPU for one
process in the <literal>postgresql.service</literal> cgroup. (By
contrast, it they were in the same cgroup, then the PostgreSQL process
would get 1/1001 of the cgroup’s CPU time.) You can limit a service’s
CPU share in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.CPUShares = 512;
</programlisting>
By default, every cgroup has 1024 CPU shares, so this will halve the
CPU allocation of the <literal>httpd.service</literal> cgroup.</para>
<para>There also is a <literal>memory</literal> hierarchy that
controls memory allocation limits; by default, all processes are in
the top-level cgroup, so any service or session can exhaust all
available memory. Per-cgroup memory limits can be specified in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>; for instance, to limit
<literal>httpd.service</literal> to 512 MiB of RAM (excluding swap)
and 640 MiB of RAM (including swap):
<programlisting>
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.MemoryLimit = "512M";
systemd.services.httpd.serviceConfig.ControlGroupAttribute = [ "memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes 640M" ];
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The command <command>systemd-cgtop</command> shows a
continuously updated list of all cgroups with their CPU and memory
usage.</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-logging"><title>Logging</title>
<para>System-wide logging is provided by systemd’s
<emphasis>journal</emphasis>, which subsumes traditional logging
daemons such as syslogd and klogd. Log entries are kept in binary
files in <filename>/var/log/journal/</filename>. The command
<literal>journalctl</literal> allows you to see the contents of the
journal. For example,
<screen>
$ journalctl -b
</screen>
shows all journal entries since the last reboot. (The output of
<command>journalctl</command> is piped into <command>less</command> by
default.) You can use various options and match operators to restrict
output to messages of interest. For instance, to get all messages
from PostgreSQL:
<screen>
$ journalctl -u postgresql.service
-- Logs begin at Mon, 2013-01-07 13:28:01 CET, end at Tue, 2013-01-08 01:09:57 CET. --
...
Jan 07 15:44:14 hagbard postgres[2681]: [2-1] LOG: database system is shut down
-- Reboot --
Jan 07 15:45:10 hagbard postgres[2532]: [1-1] LOG: database system was shut down at 2013-01-07 15:44:14 CET
Jan 07 15:45:13 hagbard postgres[2500]: [1-1] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
</screen>
Or to get all messages since the last reboot that have at least a
“critical” severity level:
<screen>
$ journalctl -b -p crit
Dec 17 21:08:06 mandark sudo[3673]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): auth could not identify password for [alice]
Dec 29 01:30:22 mandark kernel[6131]: [1053513.909444] CPU6: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
</screen>
</para>
<para>The system journal is readable by root and by users in the
<literal>wheel</literal> and <literal>systemd-journal</literal>
groups. All users have a private journal that can be read using
<command>journalctl</command>.</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-nix-gc"><title>Cleaning up the Nix store</title>
<para>Nix has a purely functional model, meaning that packages are
never upgraded in place. Instead new versions of packages end up in a
different location in the Nix store (<filename>/nix/store</filename>).
You should periodically run Nix’s <emphasis>garbage
collector</emphasis> to remove old, unreferenced packages. This is
easy:
<screen>
$ nix-collect-garbage
</screen>
Alternatively, you can use a systemd unit that does the same in the
background:
<screen>
$ systemctl start nix-gc.service
</screen>
You can tell NixOS in <filename>configuration.nix</filename> to run
this unit automatically at certain points in time, for instance, every
night at 03:15:
<programlisting>
nix.gc.automatic = true;
nix.gc.dates = "03:15";
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>The commands above do not remove garbage collector roots, such
as old system configurations. Thus they do not remove the ability to
roll back to previous configurations. The following command deletes
old roots, removing the ability to roll back to them:
<screen>
$ nix-collect-garbage -d
</screen>
You can also do this for specific profiles, e.g.
<screen>
$ nix-env -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/eelco/profile --delete-generations old
</screen>
Note that NixOS system configurations are stored in the profile
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/system</filename>.</para>
<para>Another way to reclaim disk space (often as much as 40% of the
size of the Nix store) is to run Nix’s store optimiser, which seeks
out identical files in the store and replaces them with hard links to
a single copy.
<screen>
$ nix-store --optimise
</screen>
Since this command needs to read the entire Nix store, it can take
quite a while to finish.</para>
</section>
</chapter>

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@ -1,199 +0,0 @@
<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="ch-troubleshooting">
<title>Troubleshooting</title>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-boot-problems"><title>Boot problems</title>
<para>If NixOS fails to boot, there are a number of kernel command
line parameters that may help you to identify or fix the issue. You
can add these parameters in the GRUB boot menu by pressing “e” to
modify the selected boot entry and editing the line starting with
<literal>linux</literal>. The following are some useful kernel command
line parameters that are recognised by the NixOS boot scripts or by
systemd:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.shell_on_fail</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Start a root shell if something goes wrong in
stage 1 of the boot process (the initial ramdisk). This is
disabled by default because there is no authentication for the
root shell.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.debug1</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Start an interactive shell in stage 1 before
anything useful has been done. That is, no modules have been
loaded and no file systems have been mounted, except for
<filename>/proc</filename> and
<filename>/sys</filename>.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>boot.trace</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Print every shell command executed by the stage 1
and 2 boot scripts.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>single</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Boot into rescue mode (a.k.a. single user mode).
This will cause systemd to start nothing but the unit
<literal>rescue.target</literal>, which runs
<command>sulogin</command> to prompt for the root password and
start a root login shell. Exiting the shell causes the system to
continue with the normal boot process.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term><literal>systemd.log_level=debug systemd.log_target=console</literal></term>
<listitem><para>Make systemd very verbose and send log messages to
the console instead of the journal.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
For more parameters recognised by systemd, see
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para>
<para>If no login prompts or X11 login screens appear (e.g. due to
hanging dependencies), you can press Alt+ArrowUp. If you’re lucky,
this will start rescue mode (described above). (Also note that since
most units have a 90-second timeout before systemd gives up on them,
the <command>agetty</command> login prompts should appear eventually
unless something is very wrong.)</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-maintenance-mode"><title>Maintenance mode</title>
<para>You can enter rescue mode by running:
<screen>
$ systemctl rescue</screen>
This will eventually give you a single-user root shell. Systemd will
stop (almost) all system services. To get out of maintenance mode,
just exit from the rescue shell.</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-rollback"><title>Rolling back configuration changes</title>
<para>After running <command>nixos-rebuild</command> to switch to a
new configuration, you may find that the new configuration doesn’t
work very well. In that case, there are several ways to return to a
previous configuration.</para>
<para>First, the GRUB boot manager allows you to boot into any
previous configuration that hasn’t been garbage-collected. These
configurations can be found under the GRUB submenu “NixOS - All
configurations”. This is especially useful if the new configuration
fails to boot. After the system has booted, you can make the selected
configuration the default for subsequent boots:
<screen>
$ /run/current-system/bin/switch-to-configuration boot</screen>
</para>
<para>Second, you can switch to the previous configuration in a running
system:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --rollback</screen>
This is equivalent to running:
<screen>
$ /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-<replaceable>N</replaceable>-link/bin/switch-to-configuration switch</screen>
where <replaceable>N</replaceable> is the number of the NixOS system
configuration. To get a list of the available configurations, do:
<screen>
$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-*-link
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 78 Aug 12 13:54 /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-268-link -> /nix/store/202b...-nixos-13.07pre4932_5a676e4-4be1055
</screen>
</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-nix-store-corruption"><title>Nix store corruption</title>
<para>After a system crash, it’s possible for files in the Nix store
to become corrupted. (For instance, the Ext4 file system has the
tendency to replace un-synced files with zero bytes.) NixOS tries
hard to prevent this from happening: it performs a
<command>sync</command> before switching to a new configuration, and
Nix’s database is fully transactional. If corruption still occurs,
you may be able to fix it automatically.</para>
<para>If the corruption is in a path in the closure of the NixOS
system configuration, you can fix it by doing
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --repair
</screen>
This will cause Nix to check every path in the closure, and if its
cryptographic hash differs from the hash recorded in Nix’s database,
the path is rebuilt or redownloaded.</para>
<para>You can also scan the entire Nix store for corrupt paths:
<screen>
$ nix-store --verify --check-contents --repair
</screen>
Any corrupt paths will be redownloaded if they’re available in a
binary cache; otherwise, they cannot be repaired.</para>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section xml:id="sec-nix-network-issues"><title>Nix network issues</title>
<para>Nix uses a so-called <emphasis>binary cache</emphasis> to
optimise building a package from source into downloading it as a
pre-built binary. That is, whenever a command like
<command>nixos-rebuild</command> needs a path in the Nix store, Nix
will try to download that path from the Internet rather than build it
from source. The default binary cache is
<uri>http://cache.nixos.org/</uri>. If this cache is unreachable, Nix
operations may take a long time due to HTTP connection timeouts. You
can disable the use of the binary cache by adding <option>--option
use-binary-caches false</option>, e.g.
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --option use-binary-caches false
</screen>
If you have an alternative binary cache at your disposal, you can use
it instead:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch --option binary-caches http://my-cache.example.org/
</screen>
</para>
</section>
</chapter>