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jackos1998 43cf35d54e docs: Add infrastructure overview

Document the module architecture, deployment workflows, installer, and
high-level box map.

2026-08-02 00:12:57 +01:00

installer

The custom NixOS installer image used to bootstrap new boxes.

Role

Defines nixos.systems.installer, a minimal server system rendered as a bootable ISO via config.my.buildAs.iso (my.asISO); the same base can also be built as a kexec or netboot tree.
Build it with the devshell commands: build-iso installer (or build-kexec installer / build-netboot installer). The update-installer command force-tags installer to trigger a release rebuild in CI.

Broad hardware support (my.build.allHardware pulls in the nixpkgs all-hardware profile); EFI- and USB-bootable, zstd-compressed squashfs. Volume ID jackos-<release>-<arch>, menu label "/dev/player0 Installer", image base name jackos-installer.
Root SSH with the deploy key authorized (PermitRootLogin prohibit-password); a random installer-<hex> hostname is set at boot.
INSTALL_ROOT=/mnt in the session environment, plus a show-hw-config alias wrapping nixos-generate-config --show-hardware-config --root $INSTALL_ROOT.
NixOS documentation enabled, wpa_supplicant available but not started, GC and memory-overcommit tuning for low-memory targets, LVM thin and NFS support.
No regular user (my.user.enable = false), no tmpfs-root management, no NAT, and not a deploy target (my.deploy.enable = false).

The devshell's installer commands (devshell/install.nix) drive an install over SSH against a booted installer reachable at $INSTALLER:

installer-shell — get a shell on the installer.
do-install <system> — builds the system's toplevel, nix copys the closure to the installer's $INSTALL_ROOT remote store, sets the system profile, touches /etc/NIXOS, and runs switch-to-configuration boot with NIXOS_INSTALL_BOOTLOADER=1 (skip the bootloader with --no-bootloader, skip substitution with --no-substitute).