Infecting Your Server With Nixos

To infect your server with NixOS you need to run a non NixOS Linux distribution. It works on some Linux distributions, you can check the list of supported distributions here. You can use a virtual machine or a dedicated machine (locally or using a cloud provider).

Step 1: Create SSH Keys #

First, you need to create SSH keys to access your server. To infect your machine you need to have root access using SSH Keys, it’s not possible to infect a machine without SSH access because nixos-infect is not able to get your current password and set on the new operating system (NixOS).

ssh-keygen

You need to copy your public key to the server. You can do this by running the following command:

ssh-copy-id root@your-server-ip

If you are using a cloud provider, you can use the web interface to add your SSH key.

To copy your public key to the server, you can also use the following command:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | xclip # or pbcopy on macOS

Verify that you can access your server using SSH:

ssh root@your-server-ip

If you have more than one SSH key, you can specify the key to use with the -i flag:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 root@your-server-ip

Step 2: Infect Your Server #

Now that you have access to your server, you can infect it with NixOS. If you are using a Virtual Machine or a dedicated machine, you can use the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-23.05 bash -x

If you are using a cloud provider, you can use cloud-init/user data mechanism interface to provide the script to infect your server. For example, on DigitalOcean, you can use the following script:

#cloud-config

runcmd:
  - curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elitak/nixos-infect/master/nixos-infect | PROVIDER=digitalocean NIX_CHANNEL=nixos-23.05 bash 2>&1 | tee /tmp/infect.log

You can check what command to use on your cloud provider here.

After a few minutes, your server will be infected with NixOS. You can access and verify that it worked:

nix-shell -p freshfetch --command freshfetch
            ::::.    ':::::     ::::'          root@nixos
            ':::::    ':::::.  ::::'
              :::::     '::::.:::::            OS: NixOS 23.05 (Stoat) x86_64
        .......:::::..... ::::::::             Host: Droplet
       ::::::::::::::::::. ::::::    ::::.     Kernel: Linux 6.1.69
      ::::::::::::::::::::: :::::.  .::::'     Uptime: 36 minutes
             .....           ::::' :::::'      Packages: 0
            :::::            '::' :::::'       Shell: bash
   ........:::::               ' :::::::::::.  Resolution: 1024x768
  :::::::::::::                 :::::::::::::  CPU: DO-Regular (1) @ 1.9953100681305MHz
   ::::::::::: ..              :::::           Board: DigitalOcean Droplet
       .::::: .:::            :::::            Memory: 68MB / 473MB
      .:::::  :::::          '''''    .....
      :::::   ':::::.  ......:::::::::::::'
       :::     ::::::. ':::::::::::::::::'
              .:::::::: '::::::::::
             .::::''::::.     '::::.
            .::::'   ::::.     '::::.
           .::::      ::::      '::::.

Congratulations! You have successfully infected your server with NixOS.