NixOS configuration or Pillow

Started as an attempt in "how hard could this be". I basically started copying (some functions in lib yes) the approach from Trilby project by @ners.

For me it pushed too many defaults and I like to see my own bloat that I've put inside my OS instead.

So yeah, as it started to work as good as it did, bazinga, it ran.

Now I have users in order of porting:

• vm
• karla: laptop that I don't use much
• poli: main PC
• wsl: primary work "machine" at work

VM is running full GUI and everything so it's good to test bootloaders (fun with boot animations), filesystems, installations, app default configs using nix, etc.

Good thing is that this is closer to what I had before. Every machine I use has THE SAME STUFF and it ALL WORKS EVERYWHERE. Yeey.

How-TO

For "physical machines" (VMs count) I use disko to describe and create disk layouts.

Then the rest is made of 2 parts: host and user config.

I've prepared (TODO) a MINIMAL host and MINIMAL user config. No defaults, none of my magic. Just using my library that "hides" the nice stuff of collection all the configurations into a minimal looking flake and building all together. This way it should be easy to see where all the stuff should go when migrating from a "stock" nixos setup. It's plug-and-play (as long as disk config is the same, duuuuh).

host config

Host are stored in ./hosts/<host name>/default.nix

That is the minimum setup. The library looks for all folders inside of the hosts and processes each default.nix as a function to feed data into lib.nixosSystem.

It looks something like this (vm for example):

{
  lib,
  ...
}:

lib.pillowSystem rec {
  pillow = lib.makePillowArgs {
    edition = "virtual";
    hostPlatform = "x86_64-linux";
    hasGUI = true;

    host = {
      name = "vm";
      interfaces = [ "enp1s0" ];
      disks = [ "/" ];
    };

    settings.hyprland = {
      monitor = [
        ",1920x1080@60,auto,1"
      ];
    };
  };

  modules = (lib.findModulesList ./.) ++ [
    (import ../../users/macho {
      inherit lib pillow;
    })
    (import ../../users/nacho {
      inherit lib pillow;
    })
  ];

  specialArgs = {
  };
}

It's a function that accepts lib and returns a function accepting a set.

You have to defined at least one thing: pillow.

Create it with the lib.makePillowArgs so that it forces you to define these minimum items:

• edition: workstation, virtual, wsl
• hostPlatform: x86_64-linux, aarch64-linux, ...
• host
  • name: matches ./host/<host config> name
  • interfaces: all network interfaces
• SOME MODULE (ala configuration.nix) to configure your system - bootloader, filesystem, apps, services, kernel, etc.

In VM example it looks like nothing of sorts is defined since:

• lib.pillowSystem has a default parameter useDefaults set to true. This defines base (default) nixos configurations that apply to all my systems.
• lib.findModulesList finds all *.nix files and includes them in the modules list. Sneaky.
  • these include configuration.nix and disko.nix.

pillow argset is used internally and accross all files (included in specialArgs internally) for configuration help. Lots of items from pillow.host are used in my waybar configuration to dynamically define necessary widgets on each device.

modules are placed directly into lib.nixosSystem { modules = [modules] ++ ...; } so you can treat it the same. Here I'm also importing users as modules so that they have forwarded pillow, lib, and system config set. This allows home module to reference settings from nixos.

users

Each user is configured the same as a host. Each folder in ./users/<user name> represents a user and should include at least a default.nix

The module accepts lib and pillow from the host context and returns a function that returns a nixos module, which then gets included by host nixos config.

Mandatory attributes are:

• name: username, matches directory name./users/<user name>
• configuration: placed into imports, which will be internally imported into home.homeImports = [].

Other parameters are going to be merged with their (identically named) nixos options.

Here is an example from macho:

{
  lib,
  pillow,
  ...
}:

lib.pillowUser pillow {
  imports = [
    ./configuration.nix
  ];

  name = "macho";

  initialHashedPassword = "$y$j9T$dummyhashfornow$yXUohY5bEl/XXXX"; # run `mkpasswd -m yescrypt`
  extraGroups = [
  ];

  extraSpecialArgs = {
  };
}

For nicer and longer configs the default.nix is left smaller by putting the user-specific config into configuration.nix. For comparison this would be usually named home.nix (maybe I should change it).

Inside of that I import the base user configuration: imports = [ ../../profiles/home ]; Importing that is NOT required since it only configures my default programs based on the user and host configuration (GUI, hardware, apps), so you may ignore it and use your own.

Install

Grab the nixos minimal installation iso from here. Burn it onto a USB to make it bootable. On linux it's as easy as:

# DOUBLE CHECK YOUR DISK DESTINATION. This will F$CK your primary drive if you've put it's path in here.
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/nixos-minimal-25.05.<specific version>-x86_64-linux.iso of=/dev/<your disk path> bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Boot into that bad boy and once inside, clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/prtzl/nixos-generator-tet
cd nixos-generator-tet

Once cloned create your system host confi and user:

1. Copy ./host/minimal/* to ./host/mynewconfig/
2. Modify: pillow.{ edition, host.{ name, interfaces = [] } } to match your PC
3. Modify: disko.nix to describe your disk situation. use lsblk to check your disk devices and desired filesystem type.
4. Copy ./users/macho/* to ./users/mynewuser/
5. Modify: name to match ./users/mynewuser directory name.

Now enter root user, format the drive, and install the system:

sudo -i
# first and only argument is the name of the new host config
./format_install.sh <mynewconfig>

Set the root password when prompted.

I like to set my user password here as well:

nixos-enter -c 'passwd <mynewuser>'
# enter your new user password

Restart the machine and you're done :) Happy modding!

libvirt EFI shit missing on random Tuesday

If this happens it's probably because you've updated nixos and the ovmf directory, WHICH IS HARDCODED, changed. Ok.

Go to your /nix/store and fd for ovmf-9.2.4 or whichever version is currently there, I guess just search for ovmf-

Once you find it copy the path of the directory.

Then go to the libvirt, enable XML editing, click on the OVERVIEW and XML view. Find there you can see an absolute nix path to the aformentioned ovmf. Replace it on two places and click APPLY. Done.