Graphical installer required me to use Grub but minimal install didn't?

Oneechan69 · October 29, 2025, 2:39am

My drive was dual booting Windows & NixOS. I removed all the Windows partitions, then the drive wasn’t bootable so I reinstalled NixOS on the pre-existing Nix BTRFS partition. nixos-install said boot.loader.grub.mirroredBoots and boot.loader.grub.enable is required to make my device work (I forget the exact error message). I did but then got errors about the boot partition not being EFI. I then tried the minimal installer and it didn’t require that.

waffle8946 · October 29, 2025, 2:58am

That’s not what the error means.

github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs

nixos/modules/system/boot/loader/grub/grub.nix

745d32f1f


      
          assertions = [
            {
              assertion = cfg.mirroredBoots != [ ];
              message =
                "You must set the option ‘boot.loader.grub.devices’ or "
                + "'boot.loader.grub.mirroredBoots' to make the system bootable.";

The error is simply saying that you need to set the device(s) being used if you want to use grub as the bootloader. You don’t need to use grub.

And if you don’t want any bootloader, you have to opt into that explicitly.

Oneechan69 · October 29, 2025, 3:29am

It showed up even when I set boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable.

waffle8946 · October 29, 2025, 4:50am

I believe that’s impossible. If you can somehow repro it, report it to nixpkgs if no one else has.