Create disk partitions

We will be creating two new partitions in the free space we made in the previous step. The first will be 512MB, and be used as our Linux boot partition. The second will use the remaining free space and be used for our Linux swap and root partitions.

$ gdisk /dev/sda
n       # new partition
<enter> # default partition #
<enter> # default start location
+512M   # size 512MB
ef00    # type boot

n       # new partition
<enter> # default partition #
<enter> # default start location
<enter> # size remaining space
<enter> # type default

w       # write partitions
y       # confirm

Make note of the partition numbers assigned to the partitions. You can always find them again by running fdisk -l and reading the device name of the last two entries, whose types should be “EFI Boot” and “Linux Filesystem”.
Configure disk encryption

On OS X, the standard for disk encryption is FileVault. On Linux, it’s LUKS.

We’ll be using a strategy called LVM On LUKS, where the partition we created above is an encrypted LUKS partition, on top of which we’ll layer root and swap partitions with LVM.

root_partition=/dev/sda$PARTITION_NUMBER # e.g., /dev/sda5

cryptsetup luksFormat $root_partition
cryptsetup open --type luks $root_partition enc-pv
pvcreate /dev/mapper/enc-pv
vgcreate vg /dev/mapper/enc-pv
lvcreate -L 10G -n swap vg
lvcreate -l 100%VG -n root vg

Format partitions

boot_partition=/dev/sda$PARTITION_NUMBER # e.g., /dev/sda4

mkfs.vfat $boot_partition
mkfs.ext4 -j -L root /dev/vg/root
mkswap -L swap /dev/vg/swap

And then mount them:

mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount $boot_partition /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/vg/swap

You can recover back to this step, by booting into the livecd and running:

cryptsetup open --type luks $root_partition
lvchange - vg

Start by generating a template configuration:

nixos-generate-config --root /mnt

This will produce two files:

    /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix: the system’s configuration file
    /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix: the system’s hardware configuration

Now we will need to edit configuration.nix:

# register our root luks device
boot.initrd.luks.devices = [
  { name = "rootfs";
    device = "/dev/sda5";
    preLVM = true; }
];

Also, you should ensure that the grub device is correct. For me, this was:

boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";

And then install!

nixos-install