| 7 Sep 2024 |
 commiterate | * 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 steps:
- Create a disk image with an EFI system partition (ESP) and a root partition with the Nix store in it.
- Create a disk image with a full NixOS on it.
Only step 2 requires booting up a VM and is optional if you don't need a full NixOS install. 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 step 1.
| 21:00:52 |
| 14 Sep 2024 |
 Arian | There is no need for nixos-install to make a nixos image | 08:04:36 |
| Arian | You just need a /nix/store. The initrd takes care of setting up all other directories on startup | 08:04:58 |
| Arian | And you need to register the nix store paths into the nix database | 08:05:10 |
| Arian | I can make you a little example that is not appliance based | 08:05:25 |
| Arian | But need to catch a boat now first :') | 08:05:43 |
| Arian | There's also no need for UKIs. You can just put a classic systemd-boot bootloader entry on the ESP as well | 08:06:21 |
| Arian | https://github.com/NixOS/amis/blob/main/modules/amazon-image.nix | 08:07:01 |
| commiterate | yeah I have a non-UKI version in a local file I haven't pushed. Didn't get the root partition mount working yet since I got distracted with the EC2 SSH utils stuff (need to get EC2 Instance Connect working for the GitLab auto-scaling AWS runners) | 08:07:29 |
| Arian | This is missing the nix store path registration part though | 08:07:31 |
| Arian | So can do like a boot.postBootCommands =
nix-store --load-db < /nix/store/registration
| 08:10:30 |
| Arian | Someone made the bash script work with nix too | 08:10:52 |
| Arian | Did you see that? Though a go version does sound better tbh | 08:11:07 |
| Arian | Anyhow thanks for all the help on this. Nice to have another person trying to make this nicer. | 08:12:07 |
| commiterate | yeah I saw a PR for macOS support that happens to also cover Nix | 08:12:39 |
| commiterate | though it seems like the repo's kind of abandoned | 08:12:58 |
| Arian | https://github.com/NixOS/amis/pull/114 | 08:13:41 |
| commiterate | I'm meeting with some AWS TAMs on Tuesday to go over a few feature requests. I need to drag some AWS PM and engineer aliases out of them so the feature requests don't get lost in the system | 08:13:45 |
| commiterate | oh huh | 08:13:51 |
| Arian | We also have TAMs here so if we can bundle forces to get something roadmapped that helps us lemme know | 08:14:25 |
| commiterate | ah they're relying on the fixup phase patching | 08:14:36 |
| Arian | Though I'm on PTO until 23rd :) | 08:14:39 |
| commiterate | I was going to try that at first and then just thought it would somehow be easier to rewrite | 08:14:50 |
| commiterate | extremely wrong with the crypto stuff and the undocumented IMDS endpoints for instance connect | 08:15:05 |
| commiterate | * that was extremely wrong with the crypto stuff and the undocumented IMDS endpoints for instance connect | 08:15:11 |
| Arian | It uses buildFHSEnv which basically makes the binary think it's running on a normal distro | 08:15:43 |
| Arian | It's hacky | 08:15:51 |
| Arian | But works :) | 08:15:55 |
| commiterate | * that was extremely wrong with the cryptography stuff and the undocumented IMDS endpoints for instance connect | 08:17:23 |
| Arian | Just didn't have time to test it. But if it works we can add it to nixpkgs | 08:17:40 |
