Fediversity/infra

Infra

This directory contains the definition of the VMs that host our infrastructure.

Provisioning VMs with an initial configuration

NOTE[Niols]: This is very manual and clunky. Two things will happen. In the near future, I will improve the provisioning script to make this a bit less clunky. In the far future, NixOps4 will be able to communicate with Proxmox directly and everything will become much cleaner.

1. Choose names for your VMs. It is recommended to choose fediXXX, with XXX above 100. For instance, fedi117.

2. Add a basic configuration for the machine. These typically go in infra/machines/<name>/default.nix. You can look at other fediXXX VMs to find inspiration. You probably do not need a nixos.module option at this point.

3. Add a file for each of those VM's public keys, eg.

   touch keys/systems/fedi117.pub
   

   Those files need to exist during provisioning, but their content matters only when updating the machines' configuration.

   FIXME: Remove this step by making the provisioning script not fail with the public key does not exist yet.

4. Run the provisioning script:

   sh infra/proxmox-provision.sh fedi117
   

   The script can take several ids at the same time. It requires some authentication options and provides several more. See --help.

5. (Optional) Add a DNS entry for the machine; for instance fedi117.abundos.eu A 95.215.187.117.

6. Grab the public host keys for the machines in question, and add it to the repository. For instance:

   ssh fedi117.abundos.eu 'sudo cat /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub' > keys/systems/fedi117.pub
   

   FIXME: Make the provisioning script do that for us.

7. Regenerate the list of machines:

   sh infra/machines.md.sh
   

   Commit it with the machine's configuration, public key, etc.

8. At this point, the machine contains a very basic configuration that contains just enough for it to boot and be reachable. Go on to the next section to update the machine and put an actual configuration.

   FIXME: Figure out why the full configuration isn't on the machine at this point and fix it.

Updating existing VM configurations

Their configuration can be updated via NixOps4. Run

nixops4 deployments list

to see the available deployments. This should be done from the root of the repository, otherwise NixOps4 will fail with something like:

    nixops4 error: evaluation: error:
           … while calling the 'getFlake' builtin

           error: path '/nix/store/05nn7krhvi8wkcyl6bsysznlv60g5rrf-source/flake.nix' does not exist, evaluation: error:
           … while calling the 'getFlake' builtin

           error: path '/nix/store/05nn7krhvi8wkcyl6bsysznlv60g5rrf-source/flake.nix' does not exist

Then, given a deployment (eg. fedi200), run

nixops4 apply <deployment>

Alternatively, to run the default deployment, which contains all the VMs, run

nixops4 apply

Removing an existing VM

See infra/proxmox-remove.sh --help.