Hmm for the NixOS/amis repo, are the bootstrap assumptions listed anywhere? Also, are there any research notes on EBS snapshot + AMI lifecycle management (issue)?

I just pushed an experimental Nix container + NixOS AMI publishing repo to try out some related things.

Image builds work (have no GitHub-hosted larger runners to test AArch64 in workflows though. Local emulated native compile passes) but distribution infrastructure is pending some feature requests to AWS EC2 Image Builder (handles distribution and lifecycle policies).

Hmm for the NixOS/amis repo, are there any explicit bootstrap assumptions? Also, are there any research notes on EBS snapshot + AMI lifecycle management (issue)?

I just pushed an experimental Nix container + NixOS AMI publishing repo to try out some related things.

Image builds work (have no GitHub-hosted larger runners to test AArch64 in workflows though. Local emulated native compile passes) but distribution infrastructure is pending some feature requests to AWS EC2 Image Builder (handles distribution and lifecycle policies).

the upload-ami script takes any NixOS disk image. How you build it is up to you. The current github action downloads the image from Hydra;

which builds the image similarly to:

https://github.com/NixOS/amis/pull/166/files

Then plan is to move to https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-image-repart

which doesn’t require KVM

In reply to @arianvp:matrix.org

Then plan is to move to https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-image-repart

which doesn’t require KVM

In reply to @arianvp:matrix.org
so one bootstrap problem is: Your CI needs to support KVM. Which is problematic as AWS doesn’t support KVM

In reply to @arianvp:matrix.org
so one bootstrap problem is: Your CI needs to support KVM. Which is problematic as AWS doesn’t support KVM

Hmm playing around with nixos/modules/image/repart.nix and I'm not actually sure if this can be used in place of nixos/lib/make-disk-image.nix.

make-disk-image has 2 operating modes:

1. Create a disk image with an EFI partition (ESP) and a root partition with the Nix store in it.
2. Create a disk image with a full NixOS on it.

Only step 2 requires booting up a VM. Essentially, it takes the disk image from step 1 and then runs NixOS install steps.

Step 1 doesn't require a VM just like repart, though it's using coptfs which is from the Linux kernel source tree (docs).

repart basically operates the same as make-disk-image in mode 1.

Hmm playing around with nixos/modules/image/repart.nix and I'm not actually sure if this can be used in place of nixos/lib/make-disk-image.nix.

make-disk-image has 2 operating modes:

1. Create a disk image with an EFI partition (ESP) and a root partition with the Nix store in it.
2. Create a disk image with a full NixOS on it.

Only step 2 requires booting up a VM. Essentially, it takes the disk image from step 1 and then runs NixOS install steps.

Step 1 doesn't require a VM just like repart, though it's using cptofs which is from the Linux kernel source tree (docs).

repart basically operates the same as make-disk-image in mode 1.

Hmm playing around with nixos/modules/image/repart.nix and I'm not actually sure if this can be used in place of nixos/lib/make-disk-image.nix.

make-disk-image has 2 operating modes:

1. Create a disk image with an EFI partition (ESP) and a root partition with the Nix store in it.
2. Create a disk image with a full NixOS on it.

Only step 2 requires booting up a VM. Essentially, it takes the disk image from step 1 and then runs NixOS install steps.

Step 1 doesn't require a VM just like repart, though it's using cptofs instead which is from the Linux kernel source tree (docs).

repart basically operates the same as make-disk-image in mode 1.

Maybe there's something I'm misunderstanding about the UKI that should be included in appliances.

https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-image-repart-appliance

There's this repo which seems to be producing a working image that the author is using: https://github.com/tnytown/nixos-lima-vm

Trying to do the same thing and launching the .raw file in Virtual Machine Manager w/ QEMU + KVM doesn't work though. It hangs at "Booting from Hard Disk...".

Maybe there's something I'm misunderstanding about the UKI that should be included in appliances. Maybe it includes systemd and some other stuff that removes the need for the /run folder and /bin/sh being symlinked to the Nix store's Bash install?

https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-image-repart-appliance

There's this repo which seems to be producing a working image that the author is using: https://github.com/tnytown/nixos-lima-vm

Trying to do the same thing and launching the .raw file in Virtual Machine Manager w/ QEMU + KVM doesn't work though. It hangs at "Booting from Hard Disk...".

It seems there's something I'm misunderstanding about the UKI that should be included in appliances. Maybe it includes systemd and some other stuff that removes the need for the /run folder and /bin/sh being symlinked to the Nix store's Bash install?

https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-image-repart-appliance

There's this repo which seems to be producing a working image that the author is using: https://github.com/tnytown/nixos-lima-vm

Trying to do the same thing and launching the .raw file in Virtual Machine Manager w/ QEMU + KVM doesn't work though. It hangs at "Booting from Hard Disk...".