Configuration

vpsAdminOS uses Nix configuration language. It reuses a number of NixOS modules for system configuration and also adds some of its own. Explore os/modules/ to see its capabilities.

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.