README.md

Booting Machines

Generate bootable images straight to the disk.

Table of Contents

• Raspberry Pi 5
• Other Linux Devices
• Post Image-Build
• Todo

Note

Pro Tipp: When working in this repository use just to run the build commands. This allows to skip the build section

Raspberry Pi 5

For building and booting Raspberry Pi 5 images, refer to the important discussion here: NixOS Issue #260754.

Build

Run the following command to build the SD card image for Raspberry Pi 5:

nix --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' build './boot/#nixosConfigurations.pi.config.system.build.sdImage'

Other Linux Devices

For other Linux devices, such as physical servers, use the raw-efi format for UEFI-compatible bootable images.

Build

Run the following command to build the bootable disk image:

nix --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' build './boot/#diskImage'

This uses nixos-generators to produce the image in raw-efi format.

Warning

🔴 IMPORTANT: The Linux ISO that is built is currently not tested.

Post Image-Build

To write the generated image to a disk, ensure zstd is available by running:

nix-shell -p zstd

Then copy the image to your disk with the following command:

For SD card images:

zstdcat result/nixos-sd-image-24.05.20241116.e8c38b7-aarch64-linux.img.zst | dd of=/dev/sdX status=progress

For raw or raw-efi images:

zstdcat result/disk-image.img.zst | dd of=/dev/sdX status=progress

Replace /dev/sdX with the appropriate disk or SD card device.

Todo

• Integrate disko-nix for better disk partitioning and management.