Nix Dotfiles

Nix recipes for my personal workstations.

Warning
This repository has been deprecated in favour of nix-config.

Install

System Config

The entire system configuration is written in Nix and stored in the nixos directory of this repository. It is composed of a common configuration (common.nix) that includes stuff shared between all my machines, and a system-specific config that is stored in a directory matching the target hostname. To add new machines, simply add a new directory with the proper files.

A few convenience scripts are provided to setup the system after first boot.

During system install

This guide assumes you have run the regular NixOS install guide up until section 2.3, step 4. Run the nixos-generate-config command to let NixOS detect your hardware, then set aside the hardware-configuration.nix file it creates.

Clone the repository somewhere handy. It doesn't really matter where, as we'll move it to the home folder after first boot. I usually clone it into the tmp folder so that it gets cleaned up after rebooting.

git clone https://github.com/matteojoliveau/nix-dotfiles.git /tmp/nix-dotfiles

At this point, instead of manually editing the configuration.nix file as it shows, run the bootstrap.sh script that can be found in the nixos directory of this repository. This will copy the appropriate files into the config folder.

/tmp/nix-dotfiles/nixos/bootstrap.sh /mnt/etc/nixos my-hostname

my-hostname should match one of the available configuration directory inside nixos. Beware that it defaults to the current system's hostname, which is usually nixos in the live installation environment, and it is not a valid hostname for this script as no directory with that name exists.

If you wish to use the generated hardware-configuration.nix file instead of the one provided in this repo, copy it to the target folder.

You can now resume following the regular install guide.
Don't forget to run passwd my-user to setup a password for your user (actual username is configured in common.nix).

After first boot

Once the system is installed and you have rebooted into it with your personal user, clone the repository somewhere handy. The cloned directory will be symlinked with the files' final destination so that any change made to this repo will instantly reflect on the target system.

git clone https://github.com/matteojoliveau/nix-dotfiles.git ~/nix-dotfiles

Now run the install script. It will install the system configuration into the target directory (default is /etc/nixos).

cd ~/nix-dotfiles
nixos/install.sh
doas nix-channel --update
doas nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

The script will delete and relink the target directory on every invocation, so it is safe to run multiple times. Running nixos-rebuild switch will update the system with the defined configuration.

Home Config

First, install home-manager. More updated information can be found on the official repo, but a quick cheatsheet is provided below.

# $RELEASE matches the desired channel. For example use `master` for the main branch or `release-21.05` for the stable release.
nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/$RELEASE.tar.gz home-manager
nix-channel --update

nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install

This guide assumes you have already cloned this repo in your home folder as described in the "After first boot" section.

Now run the install script. It will install the home configuration for the current user.

cd ~/nix-dotfiles
nixpkgs/install.sh
home-manager switch

The script will delete and relink the target directory on every invocation, so it is safe to run multiple times. Running home-manager switch will update the system with the defined configuration.

Structure

.
├── nix                                 # Niv directory
├── nixos                               # NixOS system configurations
│  ├── bootstrap.sh                       # Bootstrap script
│  ├── codexlab-ca.crt                    # Homelab internal CA certificate
│  ├── common.nix                         # Shared config
│  ├── frenchpenguin                      # Frenchpenguin (work laptop) specific configs
│  |  ├── configuration.nix
│  |  └── hardware-configuration.nix
│  ├── install.sh                         # Install script
│  └── microwave                          # Microwave (home desktop) specific configs
│     ├── configuration.nix
│     └── hardware-configuration.nix
├── nixpkgs                             # Home-Manager configuration
│  ├── common.nix                         # Shared config
│  ├── config.nix                         # Nixpkgs config
│  ├── configs                            # Miscellaneous config files
│  ├── home.nix                           # Main HM config (only imports common.nix and ${hostname}.nix)
│  ├── hosts                              # System-specific configurations
│  │  └── frenchpenguin.nix                 # Frenchpenguin (work laptop) specific configs
│  ├── images                             # Various images
│  ├── install.sh                         # Install script
│  ├── modules                            # Reusable components that install and configure various aspects of the system
│  │  ├── alacritty.nix                     # Alacritty (terminal emulator)
│  │  ├── bluetooth.nix                     # Bluetooth configuration (for hosts that support it)
│  │  ├── coreutils.nix                     # System core components (vim, exa, environment variables, etc)
│  │  ├── desktop.nix                       # GUI-related software (chats, email, Steam, file explorer, GTK theme, etc) [1]
│  │  ├── development.nix                   # Sofware development tools (editors, compilers, language runtimes, etc)
│  │  ├── email.nix                         # Email setup and tools
│  │  ├── fish.nix                          # Fish shell
│  │  ├── git.nix                           # Git
│  │  ├── gpg.nix                           # GPG and Keybase
│  │  ├── greenclip.nix                     # Greenclip config (clipboard manager [2])
│  │  └── xmonad.nix                        # XMonad configuration (includes DE-less tools like Rofi, Picom, Dunst, etc)
│  ├── pkgs                               # Custom packages not available on nixpkgs
│  └── xmonad                             # XMonad configuration
│     ├── xmobar.hs                         # XMobar config
│     ├── xmonad-session-rc                 # Symlinked to `.xprofile` for starting up services and preparing the graphical environment
│     └── xmonad.hs                         # XMonad main config
└── shell.nix                             # Nix Shell config

1: DEs and window managers are installed system-wide and configured locally 2: For various reasons Greenclip is actually installed and started in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix but starts as a user service.

Email

The email.nix module configures my local email setup. It uses mbsync (from the isync package) to synchronize the maildir with my remote IMAP provider (currently Fastmail), msmtp to send emails via the SMTP provider (currently still Fastmail), notmuch to index, tag and search emails locally, anew to automatically manage tags and folders and alot as the graphical interface to read, search and compose emails. On first setup of a new host, the following manual steps must be followed:

• add the Fastmail password to the local keychain. Using a device-specific app password is highly recommended Run secret-tool store --label 'Fastmail password' fastmail password then type the password in.
• run mbsync --all to pull emails from the provider for the first time and initialize the maildir
• exit and re-enter the Linux session (C-z on XMonad) to reload the environment
• optionally: check that mbsync.timer is running, and enable/start if needed by running systemctl --user enable --now mbsync.timer

Emails are polled every minute via a SystemD Timer called mbsync.timer which pulls emails via IMAP and then runs the email-sync script which does a few things, including moving archived emails to the Archive directory so that they are archived on Fastmail too, reindexing notmuch and applying afew rules.

mbsync logs can be accessed by running journalctl --user -u mbsync.service

Contributing

This repo is (unsurprisingly) managed with Nix Shells.

It requires having nix-shell and direnv installed and available, in which case it should configure everything automatically when entering the root dir from a shell prompt.

Niv is used for dependency management.

Formatting

*.nix source files are formatted using nixpkgs-fmt.