Installing Docker needs imperative steps in nixos to run?

Help
1

I have some doubts regarding the docker installation.
I have installed docker in rootless mode via:

virtualisation.docker.rootless = {
  enable = true;
  setSocketVariable = true;
};

which is mentioned in Docker - NixOS Wiki

but this doesn’t start the docker daemon by default. I have to do these imperative commands for it to work:

systemctl --user enable --now docker
systemctl --user start docker
systemctl --user status docker #to check the status

my doubt:
I want to know whether I can avoid this imperative method and make the docker daemon starts running and make the docker daemon run on boot too right after I switched to the new nixos configuration .

2

You could wrap these commands in a dedicated service, smth like this:

# not tested
systemd.services.start-docker = {
  wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
  requires = [
    "docker.service"
  ];
  after = [
    "docker.service"
  ];

  script = ''
    systemctl --user enable --now docker
    systemctl --user start docker
    systemctl --user status docker #to check the status
  '';

  serviceConfig = {
    Type = "oneshot";
  };
};
3

where can i see the documentation for this option?
coz I couldn’t get what does the attributes like wantedBy, requires, after, script, serviceConfig actually does with examples

4

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Extend_NixOS

1 Like
5

Thanks a lot.
But I wonder why it doesn’t get added automatically like all nixos configuration options work by default.

6

It’s just designed that way I’d guess?
In your use case you want to start as soon as the device / system has started, that may not be the case for everyone.
So you need to “explicitly” start the service

1 Like
7

Makes sense.
But I wanted docker to be used inside a nix-shell -p command for just a one shot. But it didn’t start the daemon when invoked as a shell and requires manually starting it in host. So I thought the behaviour is different

8

Maybe check that thread for nix-shell with docker: Is There a Way to Run Docker Inside a nix-shell? - #3 by srd424

1 Like