selfprivacy-nixos-infect/README.md

This script - is a modded version of original nixos-infect. It have been revritten to suit needs of SelfPrivacy project. Except transforming your Ubuntu Linux system into NixOS GNU/Linux, it deploys standart services that SelfPrivacy offers to their customers.

Source Distros

This script has been tested and can install NixOS from the following source distros:

On Digital Ocean:

• Ubuntu 20.04 x64

On Hetzner cloud:

• Ubuntu 20.04

On Scaleway cloud:

• Ubuntu 20.04

Considerations

nixos-infect is so named because of the high likelihood of rendering a system inoperable. Use with caution and preferably only on newly-provisioned systems.

WARNING NB: This script wipes out the targeted host's root filesystem when it runs to completion. Any errors halt execution. It's advised to run with bash -x to help debug, as often a failed run leaves the system in an inconsistent state, requiring a rebuild (in DigitalOcean panel: Droplet Settings -> "Destroy" -> "Rebuild from original").

Digital Ocean

TO USE:

• Add any custom config you want (see notes below)
• Deploy the droplet indicated at the top of the file, enable ipv6, add your ssh key
• cat customConfig.optional nixos-infect | ssh root@targethost

Alternatively, you may utilize Digital Ocean's "user data" mechanism (found in the Web UI or HTTP API), and supply to it the following example yaml stanzas:

#cloud-config

runcmd:
  - curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | PROVIDER=digitalocean NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-20.03 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

Potential tweaks:

• /etc/nixos/{,hardware-}configuration.nix: rudimentary mostly static config
• /etc/nixos/networking.nix, networking settings determined at runtime tweak if no ipv6, different number of adapters, etc.

#cloud-config
write_files:
- path: /etc/nixos/host.nix
  permissions: '0644'
  content: |
    {pkgs, ...}:
    {
      environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vim ];
    }    
runcmd:
  - curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | PROVIDER=digitalocean NIXOS_IMPORT=./host.nix NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-20.03 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

Hetzner cloud

Hetzner cloud works out of the box. When creating a server provide the following script as "User data" (this has been tested using Ubuntu 20.04 as a base OS).

#!/bin/sh

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-20.03 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

Motivation

Motivation for this script: nixos-assimilate should supplant this script entirely, if it's ever completed. nixos-in-place was quite broken when I tried it, and also took a pretty janky approach that was substantially more complex than this (although it supported more platforms): it didn't install to root (/nixos instead), left dregs of the old filesystem (almost always unnecessary since starting from a fresh deployment), and most importantly, simply didn't work for me! (old system was being because grub wasnt properly reinstalled)