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DanielSidhion / nixless-agent

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usage with nixos-anywhere #1

Open KiaraGrouwstra opened 1 week ago

KiaraGrouwstra commented 1 week ago

hi there, on hacker news I saw you mention wanting to use nixless-agent with nixos-anywhere. I had been using that so far, so I was wondering, would you maybe describe what that workflow might look like? I'm kinda curious how much would maybe need to happen on their end still to make them work together. :)

DanielSidhion commented 1 week ago

Hi!

Currently you need to install NixOS on a host with nixos-anywhere, and then from there build a configuration with nixless-agent in it, and figure out a way to push this new configuration to the NixOS machine (I'm using colmena for this). Ideally you'd only need to use nixos-anywhere with a configuration that has nixless-agent, which skips the intermediary step.

I haven't looked too deeply into the nixos-anywhere code (and its dependencies), but from what I saw, it might already work, but this is obviously untested. Development on nixless-agent is paused while I focus on other parts on the project I'm working on (nixless-agent is just a small part of it), but once I come back to it, I plan on integrating more deeply with the perlless things that other folks have been working on (switch-to-configuration-ng and others), and by that point I'll test the nixos-anywhere+nixless-agent option.

If things don't work directly by that point, I'm hoping only minimal changes will need to be done, since a nixless configuration is already supported in NixOS, and a configuration with nixless-agent is essentially just a nixless configuration with yet another daemon in it :)

Hope this answers the question!

KiaraGrouwstra commented 1 week ago

nice! i've been using nixos-anywhere's terraform module. i think that can help you specify a nixos config with nixless-agent to install. it could be interesting to at some point have a module like that get a boolean setting then to distribute new configurations using nixless-agent instead. i might play around with this sooner or later. :)

KiaraGrouwstra commented 1 week ago

oh right, the repo now doesn't have a license yet. it would be cool to see one added, to make it easier for projects like nixos-anywhere to hook into nixless-agent for such a deployment process. :)

DanielSidhion commented 6 days ago

I've been thinking about what license to use, and really the closest of the well-known licenses that fits what I'd like is AGPL, even though it has plenty of holes for scenarios like nixless-agent's.

What is your current (and future) use case for nixless-agent? Do you think AGPL will be an obstacle for that?

KiaraGrouwstra commented 3 days ago

sounds great! i was thinking nixless-agent seems like a good way to deploy lean server setups (for say hetzner) while limiting privileges for security.