NixOS-SBC

NixOS-SBC aims to provide boot images for various Single Board Computers, provide patched u-boot and kernel if required, and provide an abstraction to managing add-on hardware.

Support

Providing support will allow me to spend more time on this as well as aquire new and interesting devices.

Work in progress

This is currently a work in progress.

Currently included:

• Packages
• Image creation
  • Single BTRFS partition with subvolumes (default)
  • Single BTRFS partition
  • Single ext4 partition
• Cachix binary cache

Alpha (Functional, but subject to change):

• Nix board definitions
• Nix device definitions

Supported Single Board Computer Quick Reference

For full details, see board page. Every SBC in existance has quirks, some bigger some smaller, see the board Info pages for known quirks and issues. Info pages are currently not standarised and may not be complete.

Board Manufacturer	Model	Bootable	Kernel	Have SBC	Board page
BananaPi	BPiR3	Yes	Upstream¹˒²	Yes	Info
BananaPi	BPiR4	Yes	Vendor¹	Yes⁴	Info
Pine64	Rock64v2	Yes	Upstream	Yes	Info
Pine64	Rock64v3	Yes	Upstream	Yes	Info
RaspberryPi	RPi4	Yes	Upstream	Yes	Info
Xunlong	OrangePi 5	Untested	Upstream	No	Info
Xunlong	OrangePi 5B	Yes	Upstream³	Yes	Info

• ¹ Requires custom build
• ² Has minor patching
• ³ DTB is out-of-tree
• ⁴ Do not own WiFi card

Supported Devices

Not all devices are supported on all boards.

Device Class	Device	Requirements	Documentation
RTC	DS3231	i2c	Link

Setup

Using nix flakes

{
  description = "NixOS configuration with flakes";
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    nixos-sbc.url = "github:nakato/nixos-sbc/master";
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, nixos-sbc }: {
    nixosConfigurations = {
      my-sbc = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        modules = [
          nixos-sbc.nixosModules.default
          # Ex: nixos-sbc.nixosModules.boards.bananapi.bpir3
          nixos-sbc.nixosModules.boards.<BOARD MFG>.<BOARD MODEL>
          {
            sbc.version = "0.3";

            # User config, networking, etc
          }
        ];
      };
      x86-operator = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        modules = [
          # If foreign architecture is performing "nix build"/"nixos-rebuild" commands targeting SBC
          # and binary cache usage is desired it must be included on host performing evaluation.
          nixos-sbc.nixosModules.cache
        ];
      };
    };
  };
}

Produce your customised image with:

nix build '/path/to/your-flake-repo#nixosConfigurations.hostname.config.system.build.sdImage'

Bootstrap images

Bootstrap images can be used when you want to produce a bootable system without pre-customising the devices configuration. These images are best built on the same architecture as the target system to take advantage of caching; however, they can be cross-compiled if required.

nix build "github:nakato/nixos-sbc#sdImages.${buildHostArchitecture}.sdImage-${manufacturer}-${model}" For example: nix build "github:nakato/nixos-sbc#sdImages.x86_64-linux.sdImage-bananapi-bpir4"

Once the image is provisioned onto the SD card, the device will DHCP on all available interfaces. Log into the root user with the password SBCDefaultBootstrapPassword, then change the password with passwd.