Nixos 24.05 on Hetzner cloud with full disk encryption

alicebob · June 22, 2024, 10:09am

Hi,

I had trouble setting up full disk encryption on a Hetzner cloud machine. This documents how I got it working.

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/alicebob/ef9b162adc0760683209508daeaa7278

hetzner_nixos_luks.md

Setup full disk encryption on a Hetzner cluod CX42 machine. No fancy SSH unlock: you have to go to their web based terminal to enter the disk password on boot.

Notes:
 - Their web based terminal is /weird/. You can paste things, but it looks like it's set up for a german keyboard, and many characters change ("http://" into "http;//"), sometimes it converts everything to lowercase after a while, sometimes it enters some capslocks mode. I ended up typing as much as possible by hand, and only use alphanumeric passphrases so there are no surprises when copy-pasting those.
 - The (qemu) virtual machine doesn't use EFI, but Legacy Boot. Most setup instructions I found are for EFI systems.
 
 
## there we go
- In the Hetzner UI click the server in the list, go to tab [ISO Images], search for "nix", and mount "NixOS 24.05 (x86_64/minimal)"
- reboot, and open the terminal (the's a button on the top with [>_], which is a shortcut for the terminal

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