nixos manual: missing warning about firmware

[bgohla]

I followed the instructions in the installation section of the NixOs manual to install using the lustration method. I ended up with a bootable system, but no network access. This turned out to be due to missing firmware for my wifi card.

After some trial and error I was able to figure out that adding

  hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware = true;

to the generated /etc/nixos/configuration.nix is crucial for making the firmware drivers available for loading.

I would submit a PR myself, but I am unsure which section it should be in, i.e., https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-installing-from-other-distro or further up.

[Artturin]

nixos-generate-config usually adds this by importing a another module

Please send the contents of /etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix

What wireless card do you have?

[bgohla]

nixos-generate-config usually adds this by importing a another module

Please send the contents of /etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix

# Do not modify this file!  It was generated by ‘nixos-generate-config’
# and may be overwritten by future invocations.  Please make changes
# to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix instead.
{ config, lib, pkgs, modulesPath, ... }:

{
  imports = [ ];

  boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "xhci_pci" "nvme" "usbhid" "usb_storage" "sd_mod" ];
  boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ ];
  boot.kernelModules = [ "kvm-intel" ];
  boot.extraModulePackages = [ ];

  fileSystems."/" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/c0903bce-ce81-429c-b934-2a129879b686";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };

  fileSystems."/var/lib/docker" =
    { device = "/var/lib/docker";
      fsType = "none";
      options = [ "bind" ];
    };

  fileSystems."/boot" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/9894-2987";
      fsType = "vfat";
    };

  swapDevices = [ ];

  powerManagement.cpuFreqGovernor = lib.mkDefault "powersave";
  hardware.cpu.intel.updateMicrocode = lib.mkDefault config.hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware;
}

What wireless card do you have?

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)

Note though that firmware drivers for several other devices also failed (I don't remember with certainty which ones), it just so happened that wifi was the bottleneck.

[Artturin]

weird, the not-detected.nix(which enables nonfree firmware) should be added to imports when not in a virtual machine snippet from nixos-generate-config.pl

# Provide firmware for devices that are not detected by this script,
# unless we're in a VM/container.
push @imports, "(modulesPath + \"/installer/scan/not-detected.nix\")"
    if $virt eq "none";

and none of the other virtualization options have been added

my $virt = `@detectvirt@`;
chomp $virt;

# Check if we're a VirtualBox guest.  If so, enable the guest
# additions.
if ($virt eq "oracle") {
    push @attrs, "virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enable = true;"
}

# Likewise for QEMU.
if ($virt eq "qemu" || $virt eq "kvm" || $virt eq "bochs") {
    push @imports, "(modulesPath + \"/profiles/qemu-guest.nix\")";
}

# Also for Hyper-V.
if ($virt eq "microsoft") {
    push @attrs, "virtualisation.hypervGuest.enable = true;"
}

# Pull in NixOS configuration for containers.
if ($virt eq "systemd-nspawn") {
    push @attrs, "boot.isContainer = true;";

the command used to detect virtualization is systemd-detect-virt

please send the output of nixos-generate-config --show-hardware-config

[bgohla]

nixos-generate-config --show-hardware-config

# Do not modify this file!  It was generated by ‘nixos-generate-config’
# and may be overwritten by future invocations.  Please make changes
# to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix instead.
{ config, lib, pkgs, modulesPath, ... }:

{
  imports =
    [ (modulesPath + "/installer/scan/not-detected.nix")
    ];

  boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "xhci_pci" "nvme" "usbhid" "usb_storage" "sd_mod" ];
  boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ ];
  boot.kernelModules = [ "kvm-intel" ];
  boot.extraModulePackages = [ ];

  fileSystems."/" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/c0903bce-ce81-429c-b934-2a129879b686";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };

  fileSystems."/var/lib/docker" =
    { device = "/var/lib/docker";
      fsType = "none";
      options = [ "bind" ];
    };

  fileSystems."/boot" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/9894-2987";
      fsType = "vfat";
    };

  swapDevices = [ ];

  powerManagement.cpuFreqGovernor = lib.mkDefault "powersave";
  hardware.cpu.intel.updateMicrocode = lib.mkDefault config.hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware;
}

It does look different.

FYI, I have this:

$ readlink `which nixos-generate-config`
/nix/store/aay0cp59k9krsx361bnhwk8c0mg8d8dc-nixos-install-tools-21.11pre-git/bin/nixos-generate-config

[Artturin]

How did you install nixos? Only thing that I can think of is that you installed from a container or a vm that the script doesn't handle

[bgohla]

No, there were no containers or VMs involved. Like I wrote in the description, I used the lustration method, as described in the manual. Hardware is a Lenovo Thinkpad, that was running Gentoo.

[Artturin]

what init system?

[bgohla]

I was using OpenRC. Could that be the culprit?

[Artturin]

yeah thats probably it, i'll take a look at the systemd source and see what it does when there's no systemd

[cherusk]

Had similar issue during upgrade from 22.05 -> 22.11, resolved by adding the flag @bgohla provided.

My init-system is systemd though.