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After following the NixOS' Installation Guide, I'm failing to create a bootable Installation ISO. I created an issue for this on NixOS/nixpkgs. But I wanted to see if there was any knowledge here. Took a look around including this question, and don't see a clear answer beyond what's already in the documentation.

i) Basically, when I try to write a bootable ISO to my USB stick, I can't make it boot. From the boot menu, I run the USB stick, and am immediately exited out of the boot process without any error message. I'm simply immediately placed back in the boot loader.

sudo dd if=~/Downloads/nixos-graphical-18.03.132847.aec217852f2-x86_64-linux.iso of=/dev/sda sudo dd bs=1024 status=progress if=~/Downloads/nixos-graphical-18.03.132847.aec217852f2-x86_64-linux.iso of=/dev/sda

I also tried ii) reformatting the USB stick with fdisk (bootable, 1 partition, VFAT). And iii) calling sync after the dd write. No dice.

The simple dd copy command works on Ubuntu ISOs. Is there anything else I have to do for NixOS' ISO?

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    Are you sure /dev/sda is your USB stick? That's usually the first block device in the system, which tends to be the installed SSD/HDD. Commented Aug 12, 2018 at 4:55
  • Aside from that, they might just not provide bootable hybrid ISOs supporting UEFI. If you're trying to install Nix anyways, maybe trying with a BIOS-based virtual machine would be better; if that works (and you need to run it on a UEFI-based host), try UEFI-based vm; if that works, try disabling SecureBoot on your host and boot off (external USB) DVD; if that works, you basically got only two choke points to explore. You might also want to read this: rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/principles.html Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 12:49
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    @MichaelShigorin Bingo! I had to turn off "Secure Boot", as the NixOS installer doesn't sign it's ISOs. There's a brief blurb about it in its UEFI_boot section. So I missed that. Much obliged! Commented Aug 14, 2018 at 4:28
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    @Nutritioustim Might be a good idea if you put that as an answer and marked it as accepted, so that others in the same situation can benefit from it. :) Commented Aug 14, 2018 at 14:49
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    Glad this helped; I've reposted as an answer for future reference, agreed. Commented Aug 15, 2018 at 12:04

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They might just not provide bootable hybrid ISOs supporting UEFI. If you're trying to install Nix anyways, maybe trying with a BIOS-based virtual machine would be better; if that works (and you need to run it on a UEFI-based host), try UEFI-based vm; if that works, try disabling SecureBoot on your host and boot off (external USB) DVD; if that works, you basically got only two choke points to explore.

You might also want to read this excellent UEFI introduction by Rod Smith (helped me a lot to implement UEFI support in ALT Linux).

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    This used to work at some point - I don't expect anyone would remove the hybrid ISO property since, but there may be some bugs... Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 14:59

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