Other useful Tips ​

Manage the configuration with Git ​

NixOS configuration is just a set of text files, it is very suitable to be managed with Git, and thus we can easily rollback to a previous version when we encounter some problems.

However, NixOS places the configuration in /etc/nixos by default, which requires root permissions to modify, which is not convenient for daily use. Luckily, Flakes can solve this problem, you can place your flake anywhere you like.

For example, my usage is to place my flake in ~/nixos-config, and then create a soft link in /etc/nixos:

sudo mv /etc/nixos /etc/nixos.bak  # backup the original configuration
sudo ln -s ~/nixos-config/ /etc/nixos

# deploy the flake.nix located at the default location(/etc/nixos)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch

And then you can use Git to manage the configuration in ~/nixos-config. The configuration can be used with ordinary user-level permissions, and it is not required to be owned by root.

Another method is jsut to delete /etc/nixos directly, and specify the configuration file path each time you deploy it:

sudo mv /etc/nixos /etc/nixos.bak
cd ~/nixos-config

# `--flake .#nixos-test` means deploy the flake.nix located in the current directory, and the nixosConfiguration's name is `nixos-test`
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#nixos-test

Choose whichever you like. After that, system rollback will become very simple, just switch to the previous commit and then deploy it:

cd ~/nixos-config
# switch to the previous commit
git checkout HEAD^1
# deploy the flake.nix located in the current directory, and the nixosConfiguration's name is `nixos-test`
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#nixos-test

More operations on Git are not described here. Generally speaking, rollback can be done directly through Git. Only when the system crashes completely, you will need to restart into bootloader and boot the system from the previous historical version.

View and delete history data ​

As we mentioned before, each deployment of NixOS will generate a new version, and all versions will be added to the system boot options. In addition to restarting the computer, we can also query all available historical versions through the following command:

nix profile history --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system

The command to clean up historical versions to release storage space:

# delete all historical versions older than 7 days
sudo nix profile wipe-history --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system  --older-than 7d

# we need to collect garbages after wipe-history
sudo nix store gc --debug

Another command returns all packages installed in the system:

nix-env -qa

Reduce Disk Usage ​

The following configuration can be used to reduce disk usage, feel free to add it into your NixOS Configuration.

{ lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  # ......

  # do not need to keep too much generations
  boot.loader.systemd-boot.configurationLimit = 10;
  # boot.loader.grub.configurationLimit = 10;

  # do garbage collection weekly to keep disk usage low
  nix.gc = {
    automatic = true;
    dates = "weekly";
    options = "--delete-older-than 1w";
  };

  # Optimise storage
  # you can alse optimise the store manually via:
  #    nix-store --optimise
  # https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/conf-file.html#conf-auto-optimise-store
  nix.settings.auto-optimise-store = true;
}