bnlrnz / nixos-pi4

Building a NixOS SD Card/USB image for a Raspberry Pi 4 + remote rebuild/deployment

0. Host setup in configuration.nix (if your host has another architecture (e.g. x86_64) than the raspberry pi)

  boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems = ["aarch64-linux"];
  nix.settings.extra-platforms = config.boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems;

1. Update common.nix

In particular, don't forget:

• to configure your network
• to change the admin user able to connect through ssh
• add hosts public ssh key to connect without password

2. Build the image

nix build -L .#nixosConfigurations.pi4.config.system.build.sdImage

3. Copy the image in your sd card

DEVICE=/dev/sdd # Whatever your sd card reader or usb device is
sudo dd if=result/sd-image/pi.img of=$DEVICE bs=1M conv=fsync status=progress

4. Boot your Pi

5. From another machine, rebuild the system:

For Pi 4:

nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command --extra-experimental-features flakes run --system aarch64-linux github:serokell/deploy-rs .#pi4 -- --ssh-user pi --hostname 10.10.10.74

Notes

• Various features are much better supported on the Pi 4 than on the Zero 2 W because the Pi 4 has a nixos-hardware profile.
  • Note that nixos-rebuild --target-host would work instead of using deploy-rs. but as nixos-rebuild is not available on Darwin, I'm using deploy-rs that works both on NixOS and Darwin.
• the sdImage.extraFirmwareConfig option is not ideal as it cannot update config.txt after it is created in the sd image.

See also

• this issue
• this gist