tlaternet-server/README.md

# tlater.net server configuration

This is the NixOS configuration for [tlater.net](https://tlater.net/).

## Testing

### Building

Build the VM with:

```
nixos-rebuild build-vm --flake '.#vm'
```

### Running

*Note: M-2 will bring up a console for poweroff and such*

Running should *mostly* be as simple as running the command the build
script echos.

One caveat: create a larger disk image first. This can be done by
running the following in the repository root:

```bash
qemu-img create -f qcow2 ./tlaternet.qcow2 20G
```

Everything else should be handled by the devShell.

### New services

Whenever a new service is added, append an appropriate
`,hostfwd=::3<port>:<port>` to the `QEMU_NET_OPTS` specified in
`flake.nix` to bind the service to a host port.

There is no way to test this without binding to the host port, sadly.

## Deploying

Currently the deployment process is fully manual because there is no
CI system.

Nix makes this fairly painless, though, it's simply:

```bash
nixos-rebuild switch --use-remote-sudo --target-host tlater.net --build-host localhost --flake .#tlaternet
```

This has the added benefit of running the build on the dev machine,
which is 99% of the time much faster at building than the target
(though artifact upload may take some time on slow connections).

Note that this also requires the current local user to also be present
on the target host, as well as for this user to be in the target
host's wheel group. See `nix.trustedUsers`.