Managing NixOS Machines with Clan

Clan CLI, in conjunction with nixos-anywhere, provides a seamless method for installing NixOS on various machines. This process involves preparing a suitable hardware and disk partitioning configuration and ensuring the target machine is accessible via SSH.

Prerequisites

A running Linux system with SSH on the target machine is required. This is typically pre-configured for many server providers.

Finishing the installation

With the target machine running Linux and accessible via SSH, execute the following command to install NixOS on the target machine, replacing <target_host> with the machine's hostname or IP address:

clan machines install my-machine <target_host>

Update Your Machines

Clan CLI enables you to remotely update your machines over SSH. This requires setting up a target address for each target machine.

Setting the Target Host

Replace host_or_ip with the actual hostname or IP address of your target machine:

clan config --machine my-machine clan.networking.targetHost root@host_or_ip

Note: The use of root@ in the target address implies SSH access as the root user. Ensure that the root login is secured and only used when necessary.

Updating Machine Configurations

Execute the following command to update the specified machine:

clan machines update my-machine

You can also update all configured machines simultaneously by omitting the machine name:

clan machines update

Setting a Build Host

If the machine does not have enough resources to run the NixOS evaluation or build itself, it is also possible to specify a build host instead. During an update, the cli will ssh into the build host and run nixos-rebuild from there.

clan config --machine my-machine clan.networking.buildHost root@host_or_ip

Excluding a machine from `clan machine update`

To exclude machines from beeing updated when running clan machines update without any machines specified, one can set the clan.deployment.requireExplicitUpdate option to true:

clan config --machine my-machine clan.deployment.requireExplicitUpdate true

This is useful for machines that are not always online or are not part of the regular update cycle.

TODO:

TODO: How to join others people zerotier
- services.zerotier.joinNetworks = [ "network-id" ]
Controller needs to approve over webinterface or cli

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