Documentation: hostsblock

[ShalokShalom]

Problem

The hostsblock readme explains to enable a provided systemd service. I am new to Nix, and fail to understand how this is supposed to work, as the provided command reports that the service is not available.

Here is the nix expression: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-23.05/pkgs/tools/misc/hostsblock/default.nix And here are the services: https://github.com/gaenserich/hostsblock/tree/master/systemd The README: https://github.com/gaenserich/hostsblock#archinstall

Checklist

• [x] checked latest Nixpkgs manual (source) and latest NixOS manual (source)
• [x] checked open documentation issues for possible duplicates
• [x] checked open documentation pull requests for possible solutions

[FliegendeWurst]

Did you add hostsblock to the systemPackages?

[ShalokShalom]

Nope, I had no idea I am supposed to. I did move it to the systemPackages and ran nixos-rebuild switch. It does not find the hostsblock services either.

I am used to hblock just working out of the box (on Arch) and that one is still maintained, while hostsblock seems deprecated.

There, I never needed to configure any systemd services, or anything.

[eclairevoyant]

Since there is no hostsblock module you essentially must make one yourself.

https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sect-nixos-systemd-nixos

In order to enable a systemd system service with provided upstream package, use (e.g):

systemd.packages = [ pkgs.packagekit ];

And this is not pacman on arch, adding packages to environment.systemPackages alone is usually insufficient, as packages will never write outside of the store. You have to do some extra steps such as the above.

[ShalokShalom]

So writing a package isnt enough, some packages need modules on top, to do stuff like this, yes?