[Nix-dev] NixOS installation on multi-boot system with GRUB

Henning Thielemann lemming at henning-thielemann.de
Thu Aug 27 13:04:40 CEST 2015


I like to install NixOS it to an individual partition on my machine. I 
used the graphical installation DVD and the first problem I got is that 
the touchpad of my machine is ignored. Unfortunately I do not know how to 
control KDE/plasma with keys. An external USB mouse solved that problem 
for now.

I continued with installation to the reserved partition on my hard disk. 
The NixOS installation guide says "You must set the option 
boot.loader.grub.device to specify on which disk the GRUB boot loader is 
to be installed. Without it, NixOS cannot boot." However, I already have a 
GRUB installed by Ubuntu and I want to leave it this way. I tried to add a 
grub entry for NixOS manually but when booting into NixOS this way NixOS 
stops with "/init not found" and the CAPS LOCK key LED blinks.

Thus I should certainly find out how to properly set up NixOS on a 
multi-boot system with GRUB, first. I have partitions for Windows, Ubuntu, 
NixOS and the /home directory. Ubuntu installed and maintains GRUB. How 
can I add NixOS to the GRUB menu under this circumstance?


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