Nixpkgs: Manual networking on NixOS install

[ob7]

I am trying to install NixOS on a virtual machine that is housed on a XenServer.
This means I boot the VM from the NixOS install disk, just like a normal hardware install, but before networking will work I have to manually bridge the network.

On Debian, I would simply edit the /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf files then restart the networking and I would be in business.

But on NixOS, I have no internet connection to start with. I do not know where to find these usual files in order to manual connect the network. If I add them to the configuration file for the installer I've booted into it cannot complete the rebuild as it wants an internet connection to do a nixos-rebuild with my manual network settings.

Any ideas?

My initial settings for Debian came from the server providers tutorial here: http://docs.ovh.ca/en/guides-network-bridging.html

What I'm trying to achieve is the same thing that is achieved in the link above but for NixOS.

[Mic92]

You can use nixos-rebuild without internet connection like this:

# source: https://github.com/nixos-users/wiki/wiki/FAQ#how-can-i-disable-the-binary-cache-and-build-everything-locally
nixos-rebuild switch --option binary-caches ""

This of course assumes, that no new packages are installed.
Apart from that you should have also access to dhcpcd and ip to manually configure the network.

[Mic92]

If you need special packages, building your own iso is also straight forward:

https://github.com/nixos-users/wiki/wiki/Installation-guide#build-a-custom-installation-image

[ob7]

Following the linux ip guide here: http://linux-ip.net/html/basic-changing.html
I got nixos connected to the internet manually using ifconfig and ip