make-disk-image.nix loader for Raspberry Pi

status: unstable

What is it?

A module to make booting your NixOS configuration possible on a Raspberry Pi using make-disk-image.nix

While nix-community/raspberry-pi-nix has wide support for creating images which boot on Raspberry Pis, the approach of using sd-image.nix restricts the ability to test the machine end to end (including bootloader) using qemu-vm.nix, which is what testers.runNixOSTest uses.

This repository doesn't yet perform any tests with testers.runNixOSTest, but that will come soon.

Getting started

Prebuilt image

Download the prebuilt image from the latest github releases

CAUTION: the image has SSH enabled with a known username/password.

The prebuilt image has SSH enabled, you can log in with:

username: nixos
password: password

The purpose of this image is to allow you to quickly test whether this module will work for you. It isn't intended to serve as a long lived OS for your board.

Roll your own

For something more sustainable, make your own nixosConfiguration with the following:

# flake.nix
inputs.nixos-hardware.url = "github:NixOS/nixos-hardware/master";
inputs.nix-pi-loader.url  = "github:rcambrj/nix-pi-loader";

# configuration.nix
imports = [
  # select the relevant nixos-hardware module
  # inputs.nixos-hardware.nixosModules.raspberry-pi-3
  # inputs.nixos-hardware.nixosModules.raspberry-pi-4

	inputs.nix-pi-loader.nixosModules.default
];
boot.pi-loader.enable = true;

You cannot use boot.loader.generic-extlinux-compatible. This module disables it because it has its own modified version at boot.loader.generic-extlinux-compatible-pi-loader. You can customise options there instead.

Building an image file

To put this onto a Raspberry Pi, have nix create a disk image then burn the image to an SD/USB.

# configuration.nix
system.build.image = (inputs.nix-pi-loader.nixosModules.make-disk-image {
  inherit lib config pkgs;
  format = "raw";
  partitionTableType = "legacy+boot";
  touchEFIVars = false;
  installBootLoader = true;
});

Then run

nix build <path-to-flake>#nixosConfigurations.<your-machine-name>.config.system.build.image