In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:
-
Systemd 229, bringing numerous improvements over 217.
-
Linux 4.4 (was 3.18).
-
GCC 5.3 (was 4.9). Note that GCC 5 changes the C++ ABI in an incompatible way; this may cause problems if you try to link objects compiled with different versions of GCC.
-
Glibc 2.23 (was 2.21).
-
Binutils 2.26 (was 2.23.1). See #909
-
Improved support for ensuring bitwise reproducible builds. For example,
stdenv
now sets the environment variableSOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
to a deterministic value, and Nix has gained an option to repeat a build a number of times to test determinism. An ongoing project, the goal of exact reproducibility is to allow binaries to be verified independently (e.g., a user might only trust binaries that appear in three independent binary caches). -
Perl 5.22.
The following new services were added since the last release:
-
services/monitoring/longview.nix
-
hardware/video/webcam/facetimehd.nix
-
i18n/input-method/default.nix
-
i18n/input-method/fcitx.nix
-
i18n/input-method/ibus.nix
-
i18n/input-method/nabi.nix
-
i18n/input-method/uim.nix
-
programs/fish.nix
-
security/acme.nix
-
security/audit.nix
-
security/oath.nix
-
services/hardware/irqbalance.nix
-
services/mail/dspam.nix
-
services/mail/opendkim.nix
-
services/mail/postsrsd.nix
-
services/mail/rspamd.nix
-
services/mail/rmilter.nix
-
services/misc/autofs.nix
-
services/misc/bepasty.nix
-
services/misc/calibre-server.nix
-
services/misc/cfdyndns.nix
-
services/misc/gammu-smsd.nix
-
services/misc/mathics.nix
-
services/misc/matrix-synapse.nix
-
services/misc/octoprint.nix
-
services/monitoring/hdaps.nix
-
services/monitoring/heapster.nix
-
services/monitoring/longview.nix
-
services/network-filesystems/netatalk.nix
-
services/network-filesystems/xtreemfs.nix
-
services/networking/autossh.nix
-
services/networking/dnschain.nix
-
services/networking/gale.nix
-
services/networking/miniupnpd.nix
-
services/networking/namecoind.nix
-
services/networking/ostinato.nix
-
services/networking/pdnsd.nix
-
services/networking/shairport-sync.nix
-
services/networking/supplicant.nix
-
services/search/kibana.nix
-
services/security/haka.nix
-
services/security/physlock.nix
-
services/web-apps/pump.io.nix
-
services/x11/hardware/libinput.nix
-
services/x11/window-managers/windowlab.nix
-
system/boot/initrd-network.nix
-
system/boot/initrd-ssh.nix
-
system/boot/loader/loader.nix
-
system/boot/networkd.nix
-
system/boot/resolved.nix
-
virtualisation/lxd.nix
-
virtualisation/rkt.nix
When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
-
We no longer produce graphical ISO images and VirtualBox images for
i686-linux
. A minimal ISO image is still provided. -
Firefox and similar browsers are now wrapped by default. The package and attribute names are plain
firefox
ormidori
, etc. Backward-compatibility attributes were set up, but note thatnix-env -u
will not update your currentfirefox-with-plugins
; you have to uninstall it and installfirefox
instead. -
wmiiSnap
has been replaced withwmii_hg
, butservices.xserver.windowManager.wmii.enable
has been updated respectively so this only affects you if you have explicitly installedwmiiSnap
. -
jobs
NixOS option has been removed. It served as compatibility layer between Upstart jobs and SystemD services. All services have been rewritten to usesystemd.services
-
wmiimenu
is removed, as it has been removed by the developers upstream. Usewimenu
from thewmii-hg
package. -
Gitit is no longer automatically added to the module list in NixOS and as such there will not be any manual entries for it. You will need to add an import statement to your NixOS configuration in order to use it, e.g.
{ imports = [ <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/services/misc/gitit.nix> ]; }
will include the Gitit service configuration options.
-
nginx
does not accept flags for enabling and disabling modules anymore. Instead it acceptsmodules
argument, which is a list of modules to be built in. All modules now reside innginxModules
set. Example configuration:nginx.override { modules = [ nginxModules.rtmp nginxModules.dav nginxModules.moreheaders ]; }
-
s3sync
is removed, as it hasn't been developed by upstream for 4 years and only runs with ruby 1.8. For an actively-developer alternative look attarsnap
and others. -
ruby_1_8
has been removed as it's not supported from upstream anymore and probably contains security issues. -
tidy-html5
package is removed. Upstream only provided(lib)tidy5
during development, and now they went back to(lib)tidy
to work as a drop-in replacement of the original package that has been unmaintained for years. You can (still) use thehtml-tidy
package, which got updated to a stable release from this new upstream. -
extraDeviceOptions
argument is removed frombumblebee
package. Instead there are now two separate arguments:extraNvidiaDeviceOptions
andextraNouveauDeviceOptions
for setting extra X11 options for nvidia and nouveau drivers, respectively. -
The
Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
key combination no longer kills the X server by default. There's a new optionservices.xserver.enableCtrlAltBackspace
allowing to enable the combination again. -
emacsPackagesNg
now contains all packages from the ELPA, MELPA, and MELPA Stable repositories. -
Data directory for Postfix MTA server is moved from
/var/postfix
to/var/lib/postfix
. Old configurations are migrated automatically.service.postfix
module has also received many improvements, such as correct directories' access rights, newaliasFiles
andmapFiles
options and more. -
Filesystem options should now be configured as a list of strings, not a comma-separated string. The old style will continue to work, but print a warning, until the 16.09 release. An example of the new style:
{ fileSystems."/example" = { device = "/dev/sdc"; fsType = "btrfs"; options = [ "noatime" "compress=lzo" "space_cache" "autodefrag" ]; }; }
-
CUPS, installed by
services.printing
module, now has its data directory in/var/lib/cups
. Old configurations from/etc/cups
are moved there automatically, but there might be problems. Also configuration optionsservices.printing.cupsdConf
andservices.printing.cupsdFilesConf
were removed because they had been allowing one to override configuration variables required for CUPS to work at all on NixOS. For most use cases,services.printing.extraConf
and new optionservices.printing.extraFilesConf
should be enough; if you encounter a situation when they are not, please file a bug.There are also Gutenprint improvements; in particular, a new option
services.printing.gutenprint
is added to enable automatic updating of Gutenprint PPMs; it's greatly recommended to enable it instead of addinggutenprint
to thedrivers
list. -
services.xserver.vaapiDrivers
has been removed. Usehardware.opengl.extraPackages{,32}
instead. You can also specify VDPAU drivers there. -
programs.ibus
moved toi18n.inputMethod.ibus
. The optionprograms.ibus.plugins
changed toi18n.inputMethod.ibus.engines
and the option to enable ibus changed fromprograms.ibus.enable
toi18n.inputMethod.enabled
.i18n.inputMethod.enabled
should be set to the used input method name,"ibus"
for ibus. An example of the new style:{ i18n.inputMethod.enabled = "ibus"; i18n.inputMethod.ibus.engines = with pkgs.ibus-engines; [ anthy mozc ]; }
That is equivalent to the old version:
{ programs.ibus.enable = true; programs.ibus.plugins = with pkgs; [ ibus-anthy mozc ]; }
-
services.udev.extraRules
option now writes rules to99-local.rules
instead of10-local.rules
. This makes all the user rules apply after others, so their results wouldn't be overridden by anything else. -
Large parts of the
services.gitlab
module has been been rewritten. There are new configuration options available. ThestateDir
option was renamned tostatePath
and thesatellitesDir
option was removed. Please review the currently available options. -
The option
services.nsd.zones.<name>.data
no longer interpret the dollar sign ($) as a shell variable, as such it should not be escaped anymore. Thus the following zone data:$ORIGIN example.com. $TTL 1800 @ IN SOA ns1.vpn.nbp.name. admin.example.com. (
Should modified to look like the actual file expected by nsd:
$ORIGIN example.com. $TTL 1800 @ IN SOA ns1.vpn.nbp.name. admin.example.com. (
-
service.syncthing.dataDir
options now has to point to exact folder where syncthing is writing to. Example configuration should look something like:{ services.syncthing = { enable = true; dataDir = "/home/somebody/.syncthing"; user = "somebody"; }; }
-
networking.firewall.allowPing
is now enabled by default. Users are encouraged to configure an appropriate rate limit for their machines using the Kernel interface at/proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_ratelimit
and/proc/sys/net/ipv6/icmp/ratelimit
or using the firewall itself, i.e. by setting the NixOS optionnetworking.firewall.pingLimit
. -
Systems with some broadcom cards used to result into a generated config that is no longer accepted. If you get errors like
error: path ‘/nix/store/*-broadcom-sta-*’ does not exist and cannot be created
you should either re-run
nixos-generate-config
or manually replace"${config.boot.kernelPackages.broadcom_sta}"
byconfig.boot.kernelPackages.broadcom_sta
in your/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix
. More discussion is on the github issue. -
The
services.xserver.startGnuPGAgent
option has been removed. GnuPG 2.1.x changed the way the gpg-agent works, and that new approach no longer requires (or even supports) the "start everything as a child of the agent" scheme we've implemented in NixOS for older versions. To configure the gpg-agent for your X session, add the following code to~/.bashrc
or some file that's sourced when your shell is started:GPG_TTY=$(tty) export GPG_TTY
If you want to use gpg-agent for SSH, too, add the following to your session initialization (e.g.
displayManager.sessionCommands
)gpg-connect-agent /bye unset SSH_AGENT_PID export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="''${HOME}/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent.ssh"
and make sure that
enable-ssh-support
is included in your
~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
. You will need to usessh-add
to re-add your ssh keys. If gpg's automatic transformation of the private keys to the new format fails, you will need to re-import your private keyring as well:gpg --import ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg
The
gpg-agent(1)
man page has more details about this subject, i.e. in the "EXAMPLES" section.
Other notable improvements:
-
ejabberd
module is brought back and now works on NixOS. -
Input method support was improved. New NixOS modules (fcitx, nabi and uim), fcitx engines (chewing, hangul, m17n, mozc and table-other) and ibus engines (hangul and m17n) have been added.