Upgrading from stable to unstable

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1

I am trying to upgrade from the stable v24.11 channel to unstable. The official NixOS Manual explains exactly how to do this at the section titled “Upgrading NixOS”.

As the manual instructs, I have used these commands so far:

$ sudo nix-channel --add https://channels.nixos.org/channel-name nixos
$ sudo sudo nix-channel --update
$ sudo sudo nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

Here is the output of:

$ sudo nix-channel --list | grep nixos
nixos https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-unstable

That confirms that everything is in place, is that correct?

When I go to test with a sample application such as vscode, when I select About under the Help menu option, I am expecting to see version “1.96.2” as per the official nixpkgs repo lookup tool but my system is showing the former: “1.95.2”.

I am evidently still running stable packages when as far as I can tell I all my packages should now be unstable.

So I am still missing something. What can you folks make of this? What could I try next?

2

Hi :wave:
Do you have any other channels defined under sudo nix-channel --list?
Do you have home-manager?
If yes, can you check your user channels? (same command without sudo)
How did you install vscode? If you installed it ad-hoc (not via declaration) afair you need to run nix-env -u if you don’t use flakes (not sure about flakes case, nix profile upgrade maybe?)

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3

Thank you for your reply and suggestions.

Here is that command:

$ sudo nix-channel --list
nixos https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-unstable

On to your next question:

I briefly experimented with home manager-some time ago but backed out early. I am pretty sure I restored my NixOS to its original state without home manager. Although if there is a way to confirm this either way, then I am all ears.

When I run $ nix-channel --list without there is no output.

I don’t install packages ad hoc. Everything is installed as a declaration inside my configuration.nix. No flakes. I have my nixos configs symbolicly linked to a folder inside my home directory tracked by git hosted on GitHub which you can find here: nixoslaptop-configs/configuration.nix at 3b7c2344afb8b40b75756e242c7d43476a43d8a8 · enoren5/nixoslaptop-configs · GitHub

I am not using flakes but just for the sake of it I tried running these commands. The output was the same running them both with and without sudo:

$ nix-env -u
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
evaluation warning: CUDA versions older than 12.0 will be removed in Nixpkgs 25.05; see the 24.11 release notes for more information
building '/nix/store/xsk9wjy0dpp7w7d3r3bkzxzaklqdzq6q-user-environment.drv'...

$ nix profile upgrade
error: No packages specified.
Try 'nix --help' for more information.
4

Does your system configuration use flakes? In that case channels are not relevant and you have to change your inputs.

5

I am not using flakes. I already mentioned that above.

6

I do not see where you explicitely mention that you do not use flakes. I only see that you experimented with HM, which is a different thing.

So please verify that neither /etc/nixos/flake.nix nor /etc/nixos/flake.lock do exist. If they do, then you are using flakes.

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7

It seems you also did not read the comment.

8

Line #105 in my configuration.nix looked like this:

nix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command", "flakes" ];

When I removed the flakes input at that line as well as moved flake.nix and flake.lock into a backup directory and then rebuilt / switched, that resolved the issue. I rebooted. Now my system is on the the official unstable channel.

The source of my confusion was that the home manager guide I was using also included instructions on handling packages with flakes. I didn’t get all the way to the end of the guide. I only got through the first couple pages. I thought I had backed out successfully but evidently traces of the flakes configuration were still present on my system.

Anyways, with the flakes now gone and my configuration.nix properly configured, we’re good.

Thank you Nobbz for your patience and additional point of clarification.

9

Uh, that url seems to be wrong, have you checked that, so, you should add sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos while you added sudo nix-channel --add https://channels.nixos.org/channel-name nixos. Then also --list shows the incorrect output as well.

10

In my original post it does say this:

$ sudo nix-channel --add https://channels.nixos.org/channel-name nixos

In actual practice on my system I was correctly entering:

$ sudo nix-channel --add https://channels.nixos.org/channel-unstable nixos

The reason why my original post was wrong is that I didn’t copy it from my terminal. I copied it from the manual haphazardly.

We are all on the same page now.

11

Sorry I might be then misunderstanding something because I see you seem to be pasting in the same url again? So the url I use starts with: https://nixos.org.. and you seem to be showing https://channels.. again? Did something change with the way one upgrades to unstable? I used sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos

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This is directly from the official NixOS manual:

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image700×473 34.3 KB

13

Oh I see. I missed that. So visiting https://nixos.org/channels/... redirects to https://channels.nixos.org/....

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