Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Tom Morris (tommorris@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 20:27:11 JST Tom Morris

   Nix-shell shebangs are really handy.

   Today, I needed to write a quick and dirty Python script to do some web page parsing and regexery, so just popped in python311 and python311Packages..

   No pyproject.toml, no containers, no Docker, no venv. Run it, use result, then Nix's garbage collector will throwaway the dependencies when we're done.

   https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix-shell_shebang

   • Embed this notice
     Tom Morris (tommorris@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 20:27:10 JST Tom Morris

     in reply to

     Also 24 lines of Python with httpx and bs4 that took about 20 minutes just saved me multiple hours of time-consuming work.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 20:27:10 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     @tommorris Hey Tom, do you happen to know a good getting started guide for Nix/NixOS written for mere mortals? I really feel I should be using Nix but every time I look into I get frustrated trying to set up a working system and leave it at that.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 21:49:00 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron

     @destructatron @tommorris Thanks for the offer. I more wanted to evaluate it as a basis for the deployment of Small Web servers so I was trying to grok how it worked and there’s a huge learning curve. I was just trying to get a taste for it to see if it would be right to base this system I’m building on but it feels a bit too much like Arch Linux in its culture (at least from the outside) and I’m just not smart enough for such things :)

   • Embed this notice
     destructatron (destructatron@masto.destructatron.net)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 21:49:05 JST destructatron

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     @aral @tommorris What stuff do you want setting up? I daily drive it and would be happy to help. I'm relatively new myself, but I know enough to do most things except building/creating packages, overlays, and flakes. Your average desktop or server config, no problem for me.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 21:52:38 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron

     @destructatron @tommorris Sure, if it’s no trouble, I’d appreciate that, thank you :)

   • Embed this notice
     destructatron (destructatron@masto.destructatron.net)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 21:52:55 JST destructatron

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     @aral @tommorris I use Nix as a server, and deploying web servers is actually very easy and so is automatic SSL cert generation with lets encrypt. A few lines in configuration.nix, and it just, works. Virtual hosts, reverse proxies, PHP, and all that aren't too hard to configure. I can paste in the nginx block from my config if you'd like to take a look.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:04:11 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron

     @destructatron @tommorris Cool, thank you :)

   • Embed this notice
     destructatron (destructatron@masto.destructatron.net)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:04:13 JST destructatron

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     @aral @tommorris security.acme.acceptTerms = true;
     security.acme.defaults.email = "email goes here";
     services.nginx = {
     enable = true;
     virtualHosts = {
     "destructatron.net" = {
     forceSSL = true;
     enableACME = true;
     locations."/" = {
     root = "/sites/main";
     };
     };
     "code.destructatron.net" = {
     forceSSL = true;
     enableACME = true;
     locations."/" = {
     root = "/sites/code";
     };
     };
     };
     };
     You can do certs via certbot, but the module is experimental and acme is the recommended option. We have 2 virtual hosts defined here, my main site and the code subdomain. The location is set to /, so where browsers go for index.html. The root is the absolute path to where the site's files are. The braces define blocks. If we didn't have these, we'd be doing services.nginx.virtualHosts.domain.locations.root for example, which is kind of annoying to keep writing out.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:06:04 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron
     • scott

     @scott @destructatron @tommorris Thank you. And yes, this is very much along the lines of what I’d need to do. I actually think, for my needs, something like CoreOS set to auto-update might be better. But good luck finding inexpensive and reliable VPS hosting for either :)

   • Embed this notice
     scott@shonk.social's status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:06:06 JST scott

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • destructatron

     @aral@mastodon.ar.al @destructatron@masto.destructatron.net @tommorris@mastodon.social i have to say, the learning curve for the sort of approach you're talking about is somewhat steep. You're not just having to configure NixOS as a system, but to get the real advantage of it you'd want to package your software for Nix first, and have them be configurable through user's NixOS configs like services.kitten.enable = true; ect.
     
     I found these tutorials to really clear things up when it comes to packaging for Nix:
     
     - https://youtu.be/IrxCiNnXG4M
     - https://youtu.be/FFuBCgsLPlw
     
     I've been wanting to draw the content out into a written piece but haven't had the time yet.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:10:43 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron
     • scott

     @scott @destructatron @tommorris Thanks again :)

   • Embed this notice
     scott@shonk.social's status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:10:44 JST scott

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • destructatron

     @aral@mastodon.ar.al @destructatron@masto.destructatron.net @tommorris@mastodon.social I have recently deployed a NixOS server on Hetzner, using the ISO instructions here https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Hetzner_Cloud#From_NixOS_minimal_ISO

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:12:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron
     • scott

     @destructatron @scott @tommorris Nice. Do you know off the top of your head how much overhead that added to the server setup process. Currently, it takes me about 30 seconds to set up a new server and I really want to keep it close to that :)

   • Embed this notice
     destructatron (destructatron@masto.destructatron.net)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:12:04 JST destructatron

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • scott
     @scott @aral @tommorris I was gonna mention Hetzner actually. I used the nixos-infect method, just seemed easier than working out how to SSH into the iso. Added my public key to the root user, ran the script, and done.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:16:53 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • destructatron
     • scott

     @destructatron @scott @tommorris Cool, will have a play. Appreciate your help :)

   • Embed this notice
     destructatron (destructatron@masto.destructatron.net)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 22:16:54 JST destructatron

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • scott
     @aral @scott @tommorris Probably took about 10 to 15 seconds, mainly because apt was being slow apt. Other distros are supported though, there's a comprehensive list on the nixos-infect page. Plus the fact that you can add a cloud init file to automate the nixos-infect procedure, is even nicer.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 07-Mar-2024 18:26:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Fritz

     @Scriptkiddi @tommorris Thanks. (It ok, I’m rather opinionated myself) ;P

   • Embed this notice
     Fritz (scriptkiddi@chaos.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Mar-2024 18:27:00 JST Fritz

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan

     @aral @tommorris

     I can really recommend https://zero-to-nix.com/start/install
     It's opinionated on what features to use but to start it's really neat