Install and Configure NixOS on a Linode Proposed Changes

[iangetz]

Link: https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/install-nixos-on-linode/

Issue

Suggested Fix

Recommend removing the 'Rewrite Device Identifiers' section and its code. When following these instructions, I ran into this error when running the NixOS installer nixos-install.

Error snippet:
The option fileSystems."/".device has conflicting definition values:

• configuration.nix: /dev/sda
• hardware-configuration.nix: /dev/disk/by-uuid/...

That's because you're defining the same option twice:

• hardware-configuration.nix (generated by nixos-generate-config) already sets fileSystems."/".device to a stable path like /dev/disk/by-uuid/....
• The guide then has you set it again in configuration.nix to /dev/sda, which creates a conflict

The fix was to remove the fileSystems."/" block and swapDevices block that the guide tells you to add to /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix. Leave the entries in /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix as-is (UUID-based). Re-run nixos-install

There are potential overrides but it works fine without those configuration settings.

All other instructions worked fine. Thanks! Great guide.