How to add users

Under construction

The users concept of clan is not done yet. This guide outlines some solutions from our community. Defining users can be done in many different ways. We want to highlight two approaches:

Using clan's users service.
Using a custom approach.

Adding Users using the users service

To add a first user this guide will be leveraging two things:

clanServices: Allows to bind arbitrary logic to something we call an ìnstance.
clanServices/users: Implements logic for adding a single user perInstance.

The example shows how to add a user called jon:

clan.nix

{
    inventory.machines = {
        jon = { };
        sara = { };
    };
    inventory.instances = {
        jon-user = { # (1)
            module.name = "users";

            roles.default.tags.all = { }; # (2)

            roles.default.settings = {
                user = "jon"; # (3)
                groups = [
                    "wheel" # Allow using 'sudo'
                    "networkmanager" # Allows to manage network connections.
                    "video" # Allows to access video devices.
                    "input" # Allows to access input devices.
                ];
            };
        };
        # ...
        # elided
    };
}

Add user = jon as a user on all machines. Will create a home directory, and prompt for a password before deployment.
Add this user to all machines
Define the name of the user to be jon

The users service creates a /home/jon directory, allows jon to sign in and will take care of the users password as part of deployment.

For more information see clanService/users

Using a custom approach

Some people like to define a users folder in their repository root. That allows to bind all user specific logic to a single place (default.nix) Which can be imported into individual machines to make the user avilable on that machine.

.
├── machines
│   ├── jon
# ......
├── users
│   ├── jon
│   │   └── default.nix # <- a NixOS module; sets some options
# ... ... ...

using home-manager

When using clan's users service it is possible to define extraModules. In fact this is always possible when using clan's services.

We can use this property of clan services to bind a nixosModule to the user, which configures home-manager.

clan.nix

{
    inventory.machines = {
        jon = { };
        sara = { };
    };
    inventory.instances = {
        jon-user = {
            module.name = "users";

            roles.default.tags.all = { };

            roles.default.settings = {
                user = "jon",
                groups = [
                    "wheel"
                    "networkmanager"
                    "video"
                    "input"
                ];
            };

            roles.default.extraModules = [ ./users/jon/home.nix ]; # (1)
        };
        # ...
        # elided
    };
}

Type path or string: Must point to a seperate file. Inlining a module is not possible

This is inspiration

Our community might come up with better solutions soon. We are seeking contributions to improve this pattern if you have a nicer solution in mind.

users/jon/home.nix

# NixOS module to import home-manager and the home-manager configuration of 'jon'
{ self, ...}:
{
  imports = [ self.inputs.home-manager.nixosModules.default ];
  home-manager.users.jon = {
    imports = [
      ./home-configuration.nix
    ];
  };
}