Target with no access to internet

[Rider128]

Hello,

I am writing to request a feature that would allow for offline installation of nixOS anywhere. Currently, the installation script attempts to download the kexec installer from the internet, which is problematic for systems without internet access.

Here is the error message I encountered during my attempt to install NixOS on an offline system:

### Gathering machine facts ###
Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.100.129' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
sh: 11: [[: not found
sh: 12: [[: not found
### Switching system into kexec ###
Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.100.129' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.100.129' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
--2024-03-28 09:24:41--  https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-images/releases/download/nixos-23.11/nixos-kexec-installer-noninteractive-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
Résolution de github.com (github.com)… échec : Échec temporaire dans la résolution du nom.
wget : impossible de résoudre l’adresse de l’hôte ‘github.com’

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Connection to 192.168.100.129 closed.

I propose that an option be added to the installation script to allow for the local download of the kexec file, which can then be transferred to the target system using scp or another file transfer method. This would greatly facilitate the installation of NixOS on systems without internet access.

Thank you for considering this request.

[phaer]

Hello,

I propose that an option be added to the installation script to allow for the local download of the kexec file, which can then be transferred to the target system using scp or another file transfer method.

You can already scp a custom (or pre-downloaded) kexec image and pass the filename to nixos-anywheres --kexec argument. I think that's what you are asking for here?

[Rider128]

It's not quite what I was asking here. I was asking about a feature that allows the local machine to automatically 'wget' the correct 'kexec' file and then 'scp' the 'kexec' file to the target host. The goal is to automate the system for offline targets and always ensure we send the latest and correct 'kexec' file.

[phaer]

Okay, just to make sure: You are asking about a flag that does the equivalent of:

curl -O https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-images/releases/download/nixos-23.11/nixos-kexec-installer-noninteractive-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
scp nixos-kexec-installer-noninteractive-x86_64-linux.tar.gz $target_host:
nixos-anywhere --kexec nixos-kexec-installer-noninteractive-x86_64-linux.tar.gz [...] $target_host

The installation should then work without network - except for the SSH connection you need for nixos-anywhere - anywhere.

[Rider128]

That's what I was thinking 👍