installation not working when device is not named /dev/nvme*

[TonyBostonTB]

My disk's name is sda but the installer doesn't recognize it

...
+ sgdisk --set-alignment=2048 --align-end --new=1:0:+100M --change-name=1:disk-vdb-ESP --typecode=1:EF00 /dev/nvme0n1
Problem opening /dev/nvme0n1 for reading! Error is 2.
The specified file does not exist!

[dustinlyons]

Sorry about that, I'll get a patch out shortly.

[dustinlyons]

Okay, I've made this change:

• During bin/apply, you'll get asked to choose the installation disk. We also now give you a warning that the disk will be reformatted.

I haven't had time to test it, however, I think it's correct. If you want to give it a try, just follow the steps as you did before and run bin/apply. If there are any errors, they are likely syntactical, as I didn't introduce anything new or novel. This means I can quickly fix them, or the bin/apply script may require minor edits on your end.

Essentially, we need the correct device name in the nixos/disk-config.nix file. The bin/apply script assists in doing that by replacing the token %DISK% found inside nixos/disk-config.nix with the user's input.

Let me know how it goes.

Thank you!

[TonyBostonTB]

Since I have to issue following command sudo nix run --extra-experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' github:dustinlyons/nixos-config#installWithSecrets I do get an error where the installer doesn't find "/dev/%DISK%" of course I do not get to a point where I may issue "bin/apply

[dustinlyons]

Okay, sorry about that. I was confusing myself with the Mac installation. The bin/apply actually runs as part of the installWithSecrets nix-command. But that was broken now that the %DISK% token was introduced, so I just released a patch. To test, I'm currently building a new VM by just running

sudo nix run --extra-experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' github:dustinlyons/nixos-config#install

So can you try again?

[TonyBostonTB]

Cool! Moving forward with this. Now the next issue is that, if running the setup with keys, one would not have a chance to set an own github repo for nix-secrets. It's always trying to use your own repo.

As a sidenote: As far as I understand, you'll have to put your SSH Keys in the ROOT USers $HOME as you running sudo iwht the install command, correct?

[dustinlyons]

Yes, check out these steps here: https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config#2-optional-setup-secrets

To use secrets, you need to have created this repo beforehand. The repo can be empty just needs to exist.

There are helper commands that give you a few options to bring your keys in. Let me know if you need any clarification on the README steps.

[TonyBostonTB]

Sure I did that setup and brought my own keys, but if I run the install command, it tries to use your repo for the secrets

error: unable to download https://api.github.com/repos/dustinlyons/nix-secrets/commits/main*: HTTP errar
• 404
response body:
"message": "Not Found"
"documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/commits/commits#get-a-commit"
(use
*--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
configuration file /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix doesn't exist

[dustinlyons]

Oh, understood! Let me patch that shortly :) I'll add that to the installation.

[TonyBostonTB]

Maybe asking for the correct repo in the setup would be sufficient

[dustinlyons]

Yeah, then I can just sed/replace another token as part of install before using the flake. I can get it out within the next couple hours, gotta do some work stuff first.

[dustinlyons]

Can you try now?

[TonyBostonTB]

Awesome. Installation went fine. Only thing after reboot, my user password didn't work. Had to set it again with the root user. And thanks for the quick support here, much appreciated!

[dustinlyons]

@TonyBostonTB Awesome, great to hear! Yeah, when you enter your password during installation that's actually for root. User pass isn't set during installation. I need to find a proper way to either have a default password or let the user set it.

What else would be helpful for first-time usage? Anything you're finding confusing/hard to use?

I probably need to add the default key bindings to the README and how to change them.

[TonyBostonTB]

Actually after the first reboot, nothing really works. I get a huge segfault list with failed files and did stop for now to further investigate. :( If somebody is interested, I might install again and get to all the errors in a new issue.

[dustinlyons]

Oh wow, okay. I've got it running on a VM and an x86 machine w/ UEFI at home, and this should be very reproducible, the whole point of Nix :). So something is going on. I'd love to see the errors you're getting if you have the time. Thanks for all the input so far.