Migrate nixos deployment blog post.

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>*