Colmena

Colmena is a simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool modeled after NixOps and morph, written in Rust. It's a thin wrapper over Nix commands like nix-instantiate and nix-copy-closure, and supports parallel deployment.

Now with 100% more flakes! See Tutorial with Flakes below.

$ colmena apply --on @tag-a
[INFO ] Enumerating nodes...
[INFO ] Selected 7 out of 45 hosts.
  (...) ✅ 0s Build successful
  sigma 🕗 7s copying path '/nix/store/h6qpk8rwm3dh3zsl1wlj1jharzf8aw9f-unit-haigha-agent.service' to 'ssh://root@sigma.redacted'...
  theta ✅ 7s Activation successful
  gamma 🕘 8s Starting...
  alpha ✅ 1s Activation successful
epsilon 🕗 7s copying path '/nix/store/fhh4rfixny8b21l6jqzk7nqwxva5k20h-nixos-system-epsilon-20.09pre-git' to 'ssh://root@epsilon.redacted'...
   beta 🕗 7s removing obsolete file /boot/kernels/z28ayg10kpnlrz0s2qrb9pzv82lc20s2-initrd-linux-5.4.89-initrd
  kappa ✅ 2s Activation successful

Installation

colmena is included in Nixpkgs beginning with 21.11.

Use the following command to enter a shell environment with the colmena command:

nix-shell -p colmena

Unstable Version

To install the latest development version to your user profile:

nix-env -if https://github.com/zhaofengli/colmena/tarball/main

Alternatively, if you have a local clone of the repo:

nix-env -if default.nix

A public binary cache is available at https://colmena.cachix.org, courtesy of Cachix. This binary cache contains unstable versions of Colmena built by GitHub Actions.

Tutorial

See Tutorial with Flakes for usage with Nix Flakes.

Colmena should work with your existing NixOps and morph configurations with minimal modification. Here is a sample hive.nix with two nodes, with some common configurations applied to both nodes:

{
  meta = {
    # Override to pin the Nixpkgs version (recommended). This option
    # accepts one of the following:
    # - A path to a Nixpkgs checkout
    # - The Nixpkgs lambda (e.g., import <nixpkgs>)
    # - An initialized Nixpkgs attribute set
    nixpkgs = <nixpkgs>;

    # You can also override Nixpkgs by node!
    nodeNixpkgs = {
      node-b = ./another-nixos-checkout;
    };

    # If your Colmena host has nix configured to allow for remote builds
    # (for nix-daemon, your user being included in trusted-users)
    # you can set a machines file that will be passed to the underlying
    # nix-store command during derivation realization as a builders option.
    # For example, if you support multiple orginizations each with their own
    # build machine(s) you can ensure that builds only take place on your
    # local machine and/or the machines specified in this file.
    # machinesFile = ./machines.client-a;
  };

  defaults = { pkgs, ... }: {
    # This module will be imported by all hosts
    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
      vim wget curl
    ];

    # By default, Colmena will replace unknown remote profile
    # (unknown means the profile isn't in the nix store on the
    # host running Colmena) during apply (with the default goal,
    # boot, and switch).
    # If you share a hive with others, or use multiple machines,
    # and are not careful to always commit/push/pull changes
    # you can accidentaly overwrite a remote profile so in those
    # scenarios you might want to change this default to false.
    # deployment.replaceUnknownProfiles = true;
  };

  host-a = { name, nodes, ... }: {
    # The name and nodes parameters are supported in Colmena,
    # allowing you to reference configurations in other nodes.
    networking.hostName = name;
    time.timeZone = nodes.host-b.config.time.timeZone;

    boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";
    fileSystems."/" = {
      device = "/dev/sda1";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };
  };

  host-b = {
    # Like NixOps and morph, Colmena will attempt to connect to
    # the remote host using the attribute name by default. You
    # can override it like:
    deployment.targetHost = "host-b.mydomain.tld";

    # It's also possible to override the target SSH port.
    # For further customization, use the SSH_CONFIG_FILE
    # environment variable to specify a ssh_config file.
    deployment.targetPort = 1234;

    # Override the default for this target host
    deployment.replaceUnknownProfiles = false;

    # You can filter hosts by tags with --on @tag-a,@tag-b.
    # In this example, you can deploy to hosts with the "web" tag using:
    #    colmena apply --on @web
    # You can use globs in tag matching as well:
    #    colmena apply --on '@infra-*'
    deployment.tags = [ "web" "infra-lax" ];

    time.timeZone = "America/Los_Angeles";

    boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";
    fileSystems."/" = {
      device = "/dev/sda1";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };
  };
}

The full set of options can be found in the manual. Run colmena build in the same directory to build the configuration, or do colmena apply to build and deploy it to all nodes.

Tutorial with Flakes

To use with Nix Flakes, create outputs.colmena in your flake.nix.

Here is a short example:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
  };
  outputs = { nixpkgs, ... }: {
    colmena = {
      meta = {
        nixpkgs = import nixpkgs {
          system = "x86_64-linux";
        };
      };

      # Also see the non-Flakes hive.nix example above.
      host-a = { name, nodes, pkgs, ... }: {
        boot.isContainer = true;
        time.timeZone = nodes.host-b.config.time.timeZone;
      };
      host-b = {
        deployment = {
          targetHost = "somehost.tld";
          targetPort = 1234;
          targetUser = "luser";
        };
        boot.isContainer = true;
        time.timeZone = "America/Los_Angeles";
      };
    };
  };
}

The full set of options can be found in the manual. Run colmena build in the same directory to build the configuration, or do colmena apply to build and deploy it to all nodes.

Manual

Read the Colmena Manual.

Environment Variables

• SSH_CONFIG_FILE: Path to a ssh_config file

Current Limitations

• It's required to use SSH keys to log into the remote hosts, and interactive authentication will not work.
• Error reporting is lacking.

Licensing

Colmena is available under the MIT License.