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Settings and Apply

A LosOS box does not have settings in the usual sense. It has a description of itself, written in Nix, and the settings panes edit a small part of that description. Applying a change means rebuilding the box from the new description. That is why:

  • A change takes a rebuild, a few minutes, not a restart. The box stays reachable while it works, and a notification says when it is done.
  • A change either takes completely or not at all. A rebuild that fails leaves the box running its previous settings.
  • Every box can be rebuilt from the LosOS source plus one file holding its choices (modules/overrides.nix). A setting the panes do not write is reset on the next save.

The apply bar​

Edit any field and a bar appears at the bottom: N changes not applied yet, with Discard and Apply. A field that fails its check (a name with a space, a port out of range) is marked, and Apply waits until it is fixed. Nothing reaches the box until you press Apply.

What Apply does​

  1. The box writes your choices into its overrides file.
  2. It starts a rebuild as a background job (losos-rebuild-<job>). The Overview's Changes widget lists these jobs and whether each one took.
  3. The new system is switched in. Some changes restart the box's own control daemon mid-way; it picks the job back up on its own.
  4. A notification says Changes applied or The changes could not be applied with the reason the box gave.

Two settings that change the address​

  • Name: the box answers to <name>.local, and the apps hand out links on that name. After renaming, reach the box at its IP address (unchanged) or the new name.
  • Encrypt the connection: off makes the box plain HTTP only; the certificate step and passkeys go with it.

Settings that are not Nix​

Two things on the admin pages take effect at once, without a rebuild, because they are documents the box keeps rather than parts of its description:

  • Look (background picture, veil, hand-written widgets): kept by the box's control daemon, shared by every browser.
  • Your board of widgets: kept in the browser you arranged it in.

The full list​

The settings-to-options table maps every pane field to the Nix option behind it, for the day you want to change something the panes do not offer.