NixOS on ARM/Building Images: Difference between revisions

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{{outdated|This page needs a cleanup; it was migrated from an organically evolving article from about three wikis ago. The information may still be accurate though.}}

{{outdated|This page needs a cleanup; it was migrated from an organically evolving article from about three wikis ago. The information may still be accurate though.}}<!--

Plan

Make it obvious that this is not a public-facing API. Though the scheme is used for building e.g. armv7l and armv6l images.

Building complex images from the SD image tooling is not supported, and will not be.

-->

== Build your own image natively ==

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It is also possible to build nixos images through full emulation using QEMU/kvm but will be way slower than native and binfmt QEMU.

== ~~Installer~~ image with custom U-Boot ==

== Alternatives to building custom images ==

=== Stock NixOS installer image with custom U-Boot ===

The [https://github.com/Mic92/nixos-aarch64-images Mic92/nixos-aarch64-images] repository provides a mechanism to modify the official NixOS installer to embed the board-specific U-Boot firmware required for different boards. This method does not require QEMU or native ARM builds since the existing Hydra-built U-Boot binaries are used.

=== Editing the image manually ===

For some simple operations, like adding an SSH public key, the expected usage for new users is to manually edit the image, add the proper directory and <tt>authorized_keys</tt> file, with proper modes.

$ namei -l /home/nixos/.ssh/authorized_keys

f: /home/nixos/.ssh/authorized_keys

drwxr-xr-x root root /

drwxr-xr-x root root home

drwx------ nixos users nixos

drwx------ nixos users .ssh

-rw------- nixos users authorized_keys

</syntaxhighlight>

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 {{ARM/breadcrumb}}
-{{outdated|This page needs a cleanup; it was migrated from an organically evolving article from about three wikis ago. The information may still be accurate though.}}
+{{outdated|This page needs a cleanup; it was migrated from an organically evolving article from about three wikis ago. The information may still be accurate though.}}<!--
+Plan
+Make it obvious that this is not a public-facing API. Though the scheme is used for building e.g. armv7l and armv6l images.
+Building complex images from the SD image tooling is not supported, and will not be.
+-->
 == Build your own image natively ==
@@ Line 97: / Line 104: @@
 It is also possible to build nixos images through full emulation using QEMU/kvm but will be way slower than native and binfmt QEMU.
-== Installer image with custom U-Boot ==
+== Alternatives to building custom images ==
+=== Stock NixOS installer image with custom U-Boot ===
 The [https://github.com/Mic92/nixos-aarch64-images Mic92/nixos-aarch64-images] repository provides a mechanism to modify the official NixOS installer to embed the board-specific U-Boot firmware required for different boards. This method does not require QEMU or native ARM builds since the existing Hydra-built U-Boot binaries are used.
+=== Editing the image manually ===
+For some simple operations, like adding an SSH public key, the expected usage for new users is to manually edit the image, add the proper directory and <tt>authorized_keys</tt> file, with proper modes.
+<syntaxhighlight lang="console">
+$ namei -l /home/nixos/.ssh/authorized_keys
+f: /home/nixos/.ssh/authorized_keys
+drwxr-xr-x root   root  /
+drwxr-xr-x root   root  home
+drwx------ nixos  users nixos
+drwx------ nixos  users .ssh
+-rw------- nixos  users authorized_keys
+</syntaxhighlight>