The stal/IX on-disk installation guide
Load the machine from a bootable media, such as Ubuntu/Fedora/Nix livecd, and launch the terminal:
sudo sh
Install the tools:
test -f /usr/bin/parted || yum install parted || apt-get install parted
# gcc >= 13 can not boostrap IX right now, so we prefer clang where available
test -f /usr/bin/g++ || yum install clang lld || yum install g++ || apt-get install g++
test -f /usr/bin/git || yum install git || apt-get install git
For general instructions on disk partitioning, refer to
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide#Partition_the_disks.
Prepare EXT4 on /dev/xxx using parted, mkfs.ext4, and mount it:
mkdir /mnt/ix
mount /dev/xxx /mnt/ix
Prepare some symlinks to form the future rootfs:
cd /mnt/ix
ln -s ix/realm/system/bin bin
ln -s ix/realm/system/etc etc
ln -s / usr
mkdir -p home/root var sys proc dev
Add a symlink to trick IX package manager:
ln -s /mnt/ix/ix /ix
Add a user “ix” who will own all packages in the system (note: UID 1000 is important):
useradd -ou 1000 ix
Prepare a managed dir owned by user ix, in /ix, /ix/realm, etc:
mkdir ix
chown ix ix
Prepare the ix user home owned by ix:
mkdir home/ix
chown ix home/ix
Change the user to ix and run all commands under ix user:
su ix
cd /mnt/ix
Fetch IX package manager, will be used later, from ix user before reboot and by root user after reboot:
# we do not want to change our CWD
(cd home/ix; git clone https://github.com/stal-ix/ix.git)
Some quirks:
# like tmp dir, so realm symlink can be modified only by its creator/owner
# it is important who create/own system realm, because only they can operate it
# sudo chown {{username}} /ix/realm/system will help, iff one wants to transfer ownership
mkdir -m 01777 ix/realm
And run IX package manager to populate the root fs with bootstrap tools:
cd home/ix/ix
export IX_ROOT=/ix
export IX_EXEC_KIND=local
./ix mut system set/stalix --failsafe --mingetty etc/zram/0
./ix mut root set/install
./ix mut boot set/boot/all
Now prepare a bootable kernel for your hardware. Reboot into grub and run:
> linux (hdX,gptY)/boot/kernel ro root=/dev/xxx
> boot
where X, Y - GRUB disk and partition numbers for /dev/xxx. After a successful boot, switch into tty5, there will be a root prompt.
. /etc/session
Now we have some useful utilities in PATH from /ix/realm/root.
cd /home/ix/ix
# very important step, rebuild system realm
./ix mut system
Shell will relaunch thereafter. Actually, after any modification of the system realm, runit will reload the whole supervised process tree.
cd /home/ix/ix
./ix mut $(./ix list)
Rebuild the world and add a whole new user without sudo capability
Try logging in from tty1.
What next:
Add some uniqueness into system, without this some packages refuse to install:
./ix mut system --seed="$(cat /dev/random | head -c 1000 | base64)"