installation-cd: Add separate boot entry that has 'nomodeset'

We seem to be in an unfortunate situation: booting without 'nomodeset'
causes hangs when booting on some NVIDIA cards (6948c3ab807), but on the
other hand adding 'nomodeset' prevents X from starting on other hardware
(e.g. issue #10381 and my Thinkpad X250 with an integrated Broadwell GPU).

Attempt to remedy this situation a bit by adding a separate entry in the
ISOLINUX menu (with the non-'nomodeset' being the default).

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/iso-image.nix b/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/iso-image.nix
index fa9cc6fa20b..d3353ee7d64 100644
--- a/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/iso-image.nix
+++ b/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/iso-image.nix
@@ -43,6 +43,13 @@ let
     LINUX /boot/bzImage
     APPEND init=${config.system.build.toplevel}/init ${toString config.boot.kernelParams}
     INITRD /boot/initrd
+
+    # A variant to boot with 'nomodeset'
+    LABEL boot-nomodeset
+    MENU LABEL NixOS ${config.system.nixosVersion}${config.isoImage.appendToMenuLabel} (with nomodeset)
+    LINUX /boot/bzImage
+    APPEND init=${config.system.build.toplevel}/init ${toString config.boot.kernelParams} nomodeset
+    INITRD /boot/initrd
   '';
 
   isolinuxMemtest86Entry = ''
@@ -59,10 +66,18 @@ let
     mkdir -p $out/EFI/boot
     cp -v ${pkgs.gummiboot}/lib/gummiboot/gummiboot${targetArch}.efi $out/EFI/boot/boot${targetArch}.efi
     mkdir -p $out/loader/entries
+
     echo "title NixOS Live CD" > $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf
     echo "linux /boot/bzImage" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf
     echo "initrd /boot/initrd" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf
     echo "options init=${config.system.build.toplevel}/init ${toString config.boot.kernelParams}" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf
+
+    # A variant to boot with 'nomodeset'
+    echo "title NixOS Live CD (with nomodeset)" > $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd-nomodeset.conf
+    echo "linux /boot/bzImage" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd-nomodeset.conf
+    echo "initrd /boot/initrd" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd-nomodeset.conf
+    echo "options init=${config.system.build.toplevel}/init ${toString config.boot.kernelParams} nomodeset" >> $out/loader/entries/nixos-livecd-nomodeset.conf
+
     echo "default nixos-livecd" > $out/loader/loader.conf
     echo "timeout ${builtins.toString config.boot.loader.gummiboot.timeout}" >> $out/loader/loader.conf
   '';
@@ -230,7 +245,6 @@ in
     boot.kernelParams =
       [ "root=LABEL=${config.isoImage.volumeID}"
         "boot.shell_on_fail"
-        "nomodeset"
       ];
 
     fileSystems."/" =