NixOS installation failing behind proxy (nix-shell can't resolve hosts)

[amirfarzamnia]

I’m struggling to install NixOS behind a proxy. I’ve tried several approaches, but I keep hitting a wall where the Nix package manager can’t reach the binary caches.

My Setup:

• Connection: Phone connected via Ethernet running a local proxy server.
• Installer: NixOS Minimal Installer.
• Environment Variables: I have set HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, and ALL_PROXY (both uppercase and lowercase).

The Problem:

Connectivity seems to work for standard tools, but fails for Nix:

• Works: curl -I "https://cache.nixos.org" and curl -I "https://tarballs.nixos.org" both return a successful response.
• Fails: ping cache.nixos.org.
• Fails: nix-shell -p cowsay results in: failed to download, can't resolve hosts: cache.nixos.org, tarball.nixos.org.

The Specific Constraint:

In my region, nixos.org is accessible, but cache.nixos.org and tarballs.nixos.org are blocked/unaccessible without the proxy.

Does anyone have a reliable way to pass proxy settings to the daemon during the initial installation? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[phaeseeKe5Ee]

What region? Just curious.

[amirfarzamnia]

I am living in Iran.

[waffle8946]

Could be a fastly issue. Maybe you can try the TUNA mirror:

Announcing TUNA Nix mirror

For Nix users in China, the slow download speed of https://cache.nixos.org and other services has been a long standing issue. After quite a bit of time and work, I’m pleased to announce that has the TUNA mirror of Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS has completed its initial download and is up and running. If you’re experienced with Nix, this list of URLs should get you started: (URLs listed relative to https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn) Nix mirror: /nix Nix install script: /nix/latest/install Nix channel…

[amirfarzamnia]

Thanks. I’ll give it a shot but I don’t think it’ll work. The problem is that Nix is unable to detect my proxy. When I wanted to install Arch Linux, I just had to set the related environment variables and it just worked, but Nix isn’t working.

[dramforever]

Since Nix allows non-root access to packages, it uses a daemon to do the most of the work. Therefore you may want to set the proxy on the systemd service instead.

Use sudo systemctl edit --runtime nix-daemon.service and write something like this, setting the exact variables you want to set:

[Service]
Environment="https_proxy=..." "http_proxy=..."

Then sudo systemctl restart nix-daemon.service.

After installation, you may want to set this up permanently with options under networking.proxy. However note that they will only apply after the first nixos-rebuild switch, since the configuration switch happens after building.

[amirfarzamnia]

This solves my problem. Thanks!