NixOS boxes for Vagrant

NixOS is a linux distribution based on a purely functional package manager. This project builds vagrant .box images.

Status

stable

Usage

vagrant init nixbox/nixos --box-version 23.11

Also have a look at the accompanying nixos vagrant plugin: https://github.com/nix-community/vagrant-nixos-plugin

Auto Vars File

iso_checksums

The nixos.auto.pkvars.hcl file contains two defined variables that are required to build a box. The packer template will dereference the iso checksum from the iso_checksums variable. If a checksum does not exist for the version and architecture you are trying to build, the packer build will fail. Be sure to add the proper checksum for the ISO you would like to use to the iso_checksums map, if it does not already exist, before building.

version

Use the version variable to set the version of NixOS you want to build. By convention, this is usually set to the latest stable version of NixOS.

Building the images

First install packer and virtualbox.

Four packer builders are currently supported:

BIOS
- Virtualbox (BUILDER=virtualbox-iso.virtualbox)
- qemu / libvirt (BUILDER=qemu.qemu)
- VMware (BUILDER=vmware-iso.vmware)
- Hyper-V (BUILDER=hyperv-iso.hyperv)
UEFI - Virtualbox (BUILDER=virtualbox-iso.virtualbox-efi) - qemu / libvirt (BUILDER=qemu.qemu-efi)

Have a look at the different make build target to build your image.

make build-all # Build latest version for all architectures
make VERSION=23.11 build # Build specific version for x86_64 architecture
make VERSION=23.11 ARCH=i686 build # Build specific version for specific architecture

make vagrant-add
make vagrant-push

If you build on a host that does not support Makefile, here are some examples:

packer build --only=virtualbox-iso.virtualbox -var version=23.11 --except=vagrant-cloud nixos.pkr.hcl
packer build --only=qemu.qemu -var version=23.11 --except=vagrant-cloud nixos.pkr.hcl
packer build --only=vmware-iso.vmware -var version=23.11 --except=vagrant-cloud nixos.pkr.hcl
packer build --only=hyperv-iso.hyperv -var version=23.11 --except=vagrant-cloud nixos.pkr.hcl

The vagrant .box image is now ready to go and you can use it in vagrant:

vagrant box add nixbox32 nixos-23.11-libvirt-i686.box
# or
vagrant box add nixbox64 nixos-23.11-virtualbox-x86_64.box

Troubleshooting

If you build on a Windows OS, please make sure you keep the unix file encoding of the generated configuration files (see issue#30
Timeouts are a common issue for build failures. These can be a bit tough to figure out. increase the boot_wait value in nixos.auto.pkvars.hcl if you think timeouts may be the cause of your build failures.

Sample Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  # Disable shared virtualbox mount path (not vboxsf installed on guest)
  config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', disabled: true

  # Use a suitable NixOS base. VM built with nixbox are tested to work with
  # this plugin.
  config.vm.box = "nixos-23.11"

  # Add the htop package
  config.vm.provision :nixos,
    run: 'always',
    expression: {
      environment: {
        systemPackages: [ :htop ]
      }
    }

end

nix-community/nixbox