Installing into a nspawn container
For installing a NixOS into a systemd nspawn container the NixOS installation tools are needed.
If you run another distribution than NixOS on your host,
please follow steps 1, 2, and 3.
Create a NixOS configuration file /var/lib/machines/my-container/etc/nixos/configuration.nix.
It is important that the container root file system is under /var/lib/machines.
This is the standard location where machinectl will look for containers.
If you choose place the root into another location you need to start the container directly with systemd-nspawn.
The file needs to have at least following options enabled:
= true;
= true;
If your host uses systemd-networkd to configure the network,
you can also enable to use networkd default network configuration for your host and container.
Install the container by running following command:
nixos-install --root /var/lib/machines/my-container \
--no-channel-copy --no-root-passwd --no-bootloader
Start the container by running following command:
machinectl start my-container