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I built my router and NAS from NixOS. It was a mostly pleasant experience. Being able to sit in an IDE on my laptop, and build up a server, incrementally pushin

I built my router and NAS from NixOS. It was a mostly pleasant experience. Being able to sit in an IDE on my laptop, and build up a server, incrementally pushing changes to it, with rollback if necessary, was great, and I wouldn't want to go back to anything else. I wrote about the router here. It's pretty heavy on router stuff, and my own thoughts though... https://www.jjpdev.com/posts/home-router-nixos/ https://www.jjpdev.com/posts/home-router-nixos/

mr337 4y ago
This is fantastic reading and never really through to use nix for a router.
mistahchris 4y ago
Wow that is cool. I have been wanting to build both a router and a NAS and run nixos on them since I run nixos for everything else I do. Thanks for writing and sharing about your experience!
VTimofeenko 4y ago
Excellent read, thank you! Just in time, I have been eyeing one of those tinyminimicro pcs to replace OpenWRT with Nix. Could you share more details on push_to_router.sh? Is it a wrapper around calling nixos-rebuild through ssh?
- euroclydon 4y ago
  Yes, although later I learned I could do it in a one-liner. Here nixconfig is a folder with all my nix files: tar -czf - nixconfig | ssh 192.168.1.1 \ 'tar -zxf - && sudo cp -r ./nixconfig/* /etc/nixos/ && sudo nixos-rebuild --show-trace '"${rebuild_flag} ${name_flag}"
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    If you're ok with building locally and not on the target host, this is simpler: nixos-rebuild --flake .#foo --target-host root@foo --build-host localhost switch
    - VTimofeenko 4y ago
      Deploy-rs is a great alternative. It works as wrapper on top of flakes, local (optionally, cross-) building and copying closures to target machine with activation: https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs
      - yencabulator 4y ago
        These days, that's all included in nixos-rebuild itself, not much need for wrappers anymore. I migrated from Colmena to just nixos-rebuild.
        VTimofeenko 4y ago
        Huh, I guess I was woefully behind on changes to nixos-rebuild. Thanks for the pointer, I will check it out
        yencabulator 4y ago
        One thing nixos-rebuild doesn't get you is a secrets transmission mechanism. I've been dabbling to build something independent of NixOS/Nix that would still do that neatly...
        VTimofeenko 4y ago
        May I suggest agenix? It dovetails into my deploy-rs flake setup very nicely and I can track the encrypted secrets in the flake repo. I keep the "master" key encrypted in pass passing it in a zsh's "=" subshell to agenix.

mr337 4y ago

This is fantastic reading and never really through to use nix for a router.

mistahchris 4y ago

Wow that is cool. I have been wanting to build both a router and a NAS and run nixos on them since I run nixos for everything else I do. Thanks for writing and sharing about your experience!

VTimofeenko 4y ago

Excellent read, thank you! Just in time, I have been eyeing one of those tinyminimicro pcs to replace OpenWRT with Nix. Could you share more details on push_to_router.sh? Is it a wrapper around calling nixos-rebuild through ssh?

euroclydon 4y ago
Yes, although later I learned I could do it in a one-liner. Here nixconfig is a folder with all my nix files: tar -czf - nixconfig | ssh 192.168.1.1 \ 'tar -zxf - && sudo cp -r ./nixconfig/* /etc/nixos/ && sudo nixos-rebuild --show-trace '"${rebuild_flag} ${name_flag}"
- yencabulator 4y ago
  If you're ok with building locally and not on the target host, this is simpler: nixos-rebuild --flake .#foo --target-host root@foo --build-host localhost switch
  - VTimofeenko 4y ago
    Deploy-rs is a great alternative. It works as wrapper on top of flakes, local (optionally, cross-) building and copying closures to target machine with activation: https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs
    - yencabulator 4y ago
      These days, that's all included in nixos-rebuild itself, not much need for wrappers anymore. I migrated from Colmena to just nixos-rebuild.
      - VTimofeenko 4y ago
        Huh, I guess I was woefully behind on changes to nixos-rebuild. Thanks for the pointer, I will check it out
        yencabulator 4y ago
        One thing nixos-rebuild doesn't get you is a secrets transmission mechanism. I've been dabbling to build something independent of NixOS/Nix that would still do that neatly...
        VTimofeenko 4y ago
        May I suggest agenix? It dovetails into my deploy-rs flake setup very nicely and I can track the encrypted secrets in the flake repo. I keep the "master" key encrypted in pass passing it in a zsh's "=" subshell to agenix.