# Where does nixos-rebuild look for configuration.nix?
**URL:** https://discourse.nixos.org/t/where-does-nixos-rebuild-look-for-configuration-nix/36671
**Category:** Help
**Created:** [December 10, 2023, 12:33pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/where-does-nixos-rebuild-look-for-configuration-nix/36671 "2023-12-10T12:33:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@famadorian](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/famadorian)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2023, 12:33pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/where-does-nixos-rebuild-look-for-configuration-nix/36671/1 "2023-12-10T12:33:58Z")
I want to keep my configuration.nix in a directory in my home directory, but how can I tell nixos-rebuild where to find it and under what name?
Is this something I set with an environment variable?
I guess that’s the cleanest way, instead of specifying the filename on each invocation of nixos-rebuild?
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### Author:  [@NobbZ](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/NobbZ)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2023, 12:39pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/where-does-nixos-rebuild-look-for-configuration-nix/36671/2 "2023-12-10T12:39:55Z")
You can set `nixos-config` via the nix path or `NIXOS_CONFIG` via environment to point at the configuration
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### Author:  [@justinas](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/justinas)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/where-does-nixos-rebuild-look-for-configuration-nix/36671/3 "2023-12-10T13:48:38Z")
You can also make `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix` a symbolic link to `/home/user/whatever/configuration.nix`. Nix will follow symbolic links and resolve relative imports correctly, so `imports = [./mymodule.nix]` will load `/home/user/whatever/mymodule.nix`.