Option defaults should not refer to store paths, because they cause
the manual to be rebuilt gratuitously. It's especially bad to refer to
a highly variable path like a computed configuration file.
The ability for unprivileged users to mount external media is useful
regardless of the desktop environment. Also, since udisks2 is
activated on-demand, it doesn't add any overhead if you're not using it.
If you define a unit, and either systemd or a package in
systemd.packages already provides that unit, then we now generate a
file /etc/systemd/system/<unit>.d/overrides.conf. This makes it
possible to use upstream units, while allowing them to be customised
from the NixOS configuration. For instance, the module nix-daemon.nix
now uses the units provided by the Nix package. And all unit
definitions that duplicated upstream systemd units are finally gone.
This makes the baseUnit option unnecessary, so I've removed it.
Using pkgs.lib on the spine of module evaluation is problematic
because the pkgs argument depends on the result of module
evaluation. To prevent an infinite recursion, pkgs and some of the
modules are evaluated twice, which is inefficient. Using ‘with lib’
prevents this problem.
Latest update to udisks in 344f2e65 broke it for me. Fix it by doing the
following:
- Add udisks.service to /etc/systemd/system (via systemd.packages)
- Fix path to udisks-daemon in udisks.service (libexec/ instead of lib/)
You can now say:
systemd.containers.foo.config =
{ services.openssh.enable = true;
services.openssh.ports = [ 2022 ];
users.extraUsers.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-dss ..." ];
};
which defines a NixOS instance with the given configuration running
inside a lightweight container.
You can also manage the configuration of the container independently
from the host:
systemd.containers.foo.path = "/nix/var/nix/profiles/containers/foo";
where "path" is a NixOS system profile. It can be created/updated by
doing:
$ nix-env --set -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/containers/foo \
-f '<nixos>' -A system -I nixos-config=foo.nix
The container configuration (foo.nix) should define
boot.isContainer = true;
to optimise away the building of a kernel and initrd. This is done
automatically when using the "config" route.
On the host, a lightweight container appears as the service
"container-<name>.service". The container is like a regular NixOS
(virtual) machine, except that it doesn't have its own kernel. It has
its own root file system (by default /var/lib/containers/<name>), but
shares the Nix store of the host (as a read-only bind mount). It also
has access to the network devices of the host.
Currently, if the configuration of the container changes, running
"nixos-rebuild switch" on the host will cause the container to be
rebooted. In the future we may want to send some message to the
container so that it can activate the new container configuration
without rebooting.
Containers are not perfectly isolated yet. In particular, the host's
/sys/fs/cgroup is mounted (writable!) in the guest.
(systemd service descriptions that is, not service descriptions in "man
configuration.nix".)
Capitalizing each word in the description seems to be the accepted
standard.
Also shorten these descriptions:
* "Munin node, the agent process" => "Munin Node"
* "Planet Venus, an awesome ‘river of news’ feed reader" => "Planet Venus Feed Reader"
