Help needed installing NixOs on Macbook Pro 2019

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1

I’m currently stuck with installing NixOs on a MacBook which I bought for a project last year (and now is just collecting dust). I’ve been following rather traditional installation, using Part 1 - Installing NixOs - Tuxinaut.de as guide. Fwiw, I’m installing a UEFI boot using LVM encrypted partition.

It’s only during the last part of the installation, after calling sudo nixos-install which strange errors start to appear. I’m using the latest 20.3 image, on top of which I use the latest nixos-unstable channel (due to unrelated issue with texlive install-info).

When this error occurs, I’m unable to go back with ctrl-c, it loops and stays forever. I tried adding kernel flags, using clues from nixos-hardware repo, but nothing works it seems.

Here’s a screenshot of this loop of death:

vlcsnap-2021-02-09-02h22m31s937
vlcsnap-2021-02-09-02h22m31s9371080×1920 523 KB

Some of the text in case the screenshot is unclear:

invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
CPU: 2 PID: 11295 Comm: kworker/u32:15 Tainted: P   W O  5.4.95 #1-NixOS
Hardware name: Apple Inc. MacBookPro15,1/Mac-937A206...
Workerqueue: efi_rts_wq efi_call_rts
RIP: 0010:0xfff....
....
Call Trace:
? __switch_to_asm0x40/0x70

p.s. made a video, which shows nixos-install up until the error, nixos-install bug - YouTube

Solved(almost): Following the hardware configuration from dotgiles/hardware-configuration.nix at master · gilescope/dotgiles · GitHub I was able to bypass this error and build successfully. Albeit not able to boot the EFI partition (but it does appear as option).

2

SOLVED
For the future person who reads this.

For single boot, use https://github.com/gilescope/dotgiles/blob/b59280ca0056c8ad93ae8330241671a3ba15e0c8/configuration.nix

but with a twist, don’t use /boot/efi just /boot, that extra efi is probably dual boot.

  boot.loader = {
	  grub = {
		  device = "nodev";
		  gfxmodeEfi = "1024x768";
		  efiSupport = true;
		  efiInstallAsRemovable = true;
	  };
	  efi.efiSysMountPoint = "/boot";
	  efi.canTouchEfiVariables = false;
  };
  boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_latest;
2 Likes
3

Congratulations that you solved the issue. You could share knowledge in https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/ for future Nixers that would get stuck.

4 Likes
4

Will do. Getting nixos to run is only the start of the battle of getting the hardware to work. nixos-hardware would be a good place to collaborate on this task.