Installation

Although vpsAdminOS is meant to be run from memory, it is also possible to install it on a hard drive or flash drive. This is useful for storage nodes that will act as netboot servers for the rest of the nodes or as a an option to run without netboot at all.

vpsAdminOS provides os-generate-config and os-install tools similar to nixos-generate-config and nixos-install.

Installation requires manual partitioning using e.g. fdisk. If your installation device is /dev/sda, you can create a single partition /dev/sda1 and mount it to /mnt.

Configs can be generated using

os-generate-config --root /mnt

In /mnt/vpsadminos/configuration.nix make sure to set boot.loader.grub.device option to point to drive where GRUB should be installed. You can also set boot.loader.grub.devices to install GRUB to multiple devices.

You can also configure your ZFS pools at this point.

After adjustments of generated configs in /mnt/vpsadminos/ OS can be installed using

os-install --root /mnt

After setting the password your installation is completed and you can reboot your machine. Further changes to your installation can be performed by editing configs in /etc/vpsadminos/ and running os-rebuild switch.

Chroot

If you need to chroot into vpsAdminOS installation use os-enter utility - if your installation is mounted at /mnt you can chroot into it by running:

os-enter /mnt