I’m using UTM V3.2.4 (qemu front-end) on an m1 mac (V12.5.1 Monterey) with the latest nightly NixOS aarch-linux ISO.
The NixOS VM starts as expected and I can then run nixos-generate-config. This creates the hardware configuration file and the configuration.nix file. Neither of these files have any sections referencing the file system so my changes are lost on reboot.
Should I always add file system references manually?
This configuration file looks relevant: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config/blob/79cd7704f8bd45800ed846fdceb8c1c26bcebd1a/hardware/vm-aarch64-utm.nix
It should (and does, in the many times I’ve played with it). Did you actually make a file system on a disk, mount it at /mnt, and use nixos-generate-config --root /mnt?
I think I assumed the installer was doing things like creating a filesystem when it’s not.
The calamares in the graphical ISO can automate that stuff for you. The minimal ISO expects you to do it yourself and run nixos-generate-config and nixos-install after.
That’s fair enough–thanks for the tip.
Is there a graphical ISO for aarch64 (needed for the m1 macs)?
On Hydra I can see: Hydra - nixos:release-21.11-aarch64