Runbook: Fresh Install

Status: living

Use this when installing Dubnium from a NixOS live USB onto a fresh machine.

Primary checklist:

• ../fresh-install-checklist.md

Key Rules

• Decide disk layout before writing partitions.
• After booting from the USB installer, verify the tools needed to inspect or extract the prepared repo source are available.
• Because dubnium is private, use the custom installer USB as the preferred source path instead of assuming live GitHub access will work.
• The custom installer USB bakes a source export into the live image; use unpack-dubnium to extract it to ~/local/src/dubnium.
• The same physical USB should carry the materialized model bundle on DUB-SEED, so first boot does not depend on a model-provider download.
• Generate hosts/workstation/hardware-configuration.nix from the real target mount layout.
• After first boot, reconcile install-time source changes into a normal Git checkout before treating them as repo history.
• Review host options before install.
• Boot into a desktop-default system first.
• Validate mode status before testing transitions.

First Boot Expectations

• current mode should classify as desktop
• the selected user’s Home Manager configuration should be present from the Dubnium dotfiles profile
• vLLM should not be active
• studio-local overlay services should not be active unless requested
• /run/mode-controller should exist

Do not start compute testing until the desktop baseline is observable and repeatable.

Custom Installer Quick Path

If booted from the Dubnium custom installer USB:

install-dubnium-from-usb

The one-shot command partitions and formats the selected disk, unpacks the baked source snapshot, generates the workstation hardware config, and runs nixos-install. By default it then sets the normal user’s password inside the installed system with passwd; use --password-mode hash for the older host-local hash flow or --password-mode skip when another login path already exists. With no arguments it prints lsblk, prompts for the target whole disk, defaults to btrfs, copies the install snapshot into the installed system, and requires final y/N confirmation unless --yes is passed.

Manual path:

unpack-dubnium
cd ~/local/src/dubnium

Then follow the fresh-install checklist from the partitioning step onward and install with:

sudo nixos-install --flake .#workstation

After first boot, restore the selected model seed from the USB model bundle as described in Model Seeding.

If the install used the custom source snapshot or another export without .git history, follow Post-Install Source Reconciliation before committing or pushing install-time changes.