Configuration

vpsAdminOS uses Nix configuration language. It reuses a number of NixOS modules for system configuration and also adds some of its own. The full list of supported options can be found in the OS reference documentation.

Default and example configs are included in os/configs/ directory.

• make qemu uses qemu.nix
• make iso-image uses iso.nix

The simplest way to start with vpsAdminOS is to clone its repository and put your configuration in os/configs/local.nix, which you can base on os/configs/local.nix.sample. local.nix is imported with make qemu automatically if it exists.

Another option is to put path to your config to environment variable VPSADMINOS_CONFIG, e.g.:

export VPSADMINOS_CONFIG=/where/is/your/config.nix
make qemu

Declarative containers

It is possible to built the os with images for containers to be imported and started on boot by osctld. For examples see configs/containers directory. This functionality is experimental and mostly used for testing.

Explicit configuration and dependencies

Most of the make targets are just wrappers for nix-build. It is possible to build the os by specifying required arguments directly without relying on nixops or setting the correct NIX_PATH. The following example demonstrates how to build the os directly without make.

cd os
nix-build \
 --arg configuration /where/is/your/config.nix \
 --arg nixpkgs "../../nixpkgs" \
 --cores 0

configuration can also be passed via environmental variable VPSADMINOS_CONFIG, so this is equivalent:

cd os
export VPSADMINOS_CONFIG=/where/is/your/config.nix
nix-build \
 --arg nixpkgs "../../nixpkgs" \
 --cores 0

VPSADMINOS_CONFIG has to be an absolute path.