blogng/blog/2023-11-14-easy-nixos-remote-deployments.markdown

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---
layout: post
title: "Easy NixOS remote deployments"
date: 2023-11-14
comments: true
tags: nixos, nix, flakes
---
There exists a [mutitude](https://github.com/NixOS/nixops)
[of](https://github.com/DBCDK/morph) [tooling](https://github.com/krebs/krops)
to remotely manage nixos machines, each with its own features and compromises.
In my experience, for a simple deployment of few hosts
`nixos-rebuild --target-host` is pretty powerful.
This is the workflow I've been using to manage my personal systems:
I bootstrap the machines manually by following the [nixos install
guide](https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-installation), and copy over
the generated configuration to `config/<hostname>/configuration.nix`.
On the root directory create `flake.nix`:
```nix
{
description = "systems needed";
inputs = {
# extra inputs go here
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs }@attrs: {
# this is where we add new machines
nixosConfigurations = {
# host fancyHostname
fancyHostname = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
system = "x86_64-linux";
specialArgs = attrs;
modules = [
# This points to the actual machine configuration
(import ./config/nixmachine/configuration.nix)
];
};
};
};
}
```
From there, hosts can deployed over SSH!
```
nixos-rebuild switch --target-host root@fancyHostname --flake '.#fancyHostname'
```
More hosts can be added by adding them to the `nixosConfigurations` attribute set.
```
nixosConfigurations = {
fancySecondHost = { ... }
...
}
```
## Should I do this?
I think this is an easier workflow for me to manage and debug, However a lot of
things in this space has non-linear learning curves and has sparse documentation
at best.
So maybe a tool with better documentation might work well for you?
This also relies heavily on `flakes`, which is "experimental". In my experience,
ground reality is everyone uses flakes, but good documentation is hard to come by
I've herd good things about Nix [Flakes Book](https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/), but
haven't read it
*This was first published at <https://pencil.lalalala.in/dbalan/easy-nixos-remote-deployments>*