How to install NixOS on kimsufi

One-minute read

Here are some notes on how to install NixOS 19.09 on a Kimsufi dedicated server.

From the kimsufi webmail interface

  • Go to the Kimsufi webui
  • Choose netboot and select the resuce64pro
  • Reboot the server
  • Use the root credentials sent by mail from OVH
  • SSH to the server with above credentials

From the server rescue mode

The following links can be useful:

In this procedure, we use the BIOS mode.

 # Create the FS layout
 parted /dev/sda -- mklabel msdos
 parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 1MiB 200GiB
 parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 200GiB -8GiB
 parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100%
 mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1
 mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
 mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
 swapon /dev/sda3

 # Create users
 groupadd -g 30000 nixbld
 useradd -u 30000 -g nixbld -G nixbld nixbld

 useradd -m setupuser
 passwd setupuser
 sed s/root/setupuser/ /etc/sudoers -i
 su setupuser -s /bin/bash

 # Install Nix
 curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
 . $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

 nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-19.09 nixpkgs
 nix-channel --update

 # Install NixOS
 sudo `which nixos-generate-config` --root /mnt
 # Now we need to copy a configuration.nix file to /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

 export PATH=/usr/sbin:/sbin:$PATH
 sudo PATH="$PATH" NIX_PATH="$NIX_PATH" `which nixos-install` --root /mnt

Once installed, we need to choose to boot from the hard drive in the Kimsufi webmail, and reboot the server.