Update Your Machines

Clan CLI enables you to remotely update your machines over SSH. This requires setting up a target address for each target machine.

Setting `targetHost`

In your Nix files, set the targetHost to the reachable IP address of your new machine. This eliminates the need to specify --target-host with every command.

clan.nix

{
# Ensure this is unique among all clans you want to use.
meta.name = "my-clan";

inventory.machines = {
    # Define machines here.
    # The machine name will be used as the hostname.
    jon = {
        deploy.targetHost = "root@192.168.192.4"; # (1)
    };
};
# [...]
}

The use of root@ in the target address implies SSH access as the root user. Ensure that the root login is secured and only used when necessary.

Setting a Build Host

If the machine does not have enough resources to run the NixOS evaluation or build itself, it is also possible to specify a build host instead. During an update, the cli will ssh into the build host and run nixos-rebuild from there.

buildClan {
    # ...
    machines = {
        "jon" = {
            clan.core.networking.buildHost = "root@<host_or_ip>";
        };
    };
};

Note

Make sure that the CPU architecture is the same for the buildHost as for the targetHost. Example: If you want to deploy to a macOS machine, your architecture is an ARM64-Darwin, that means you need a second macOS machine to build it.

Updating Machine Configurations

Execute the following command to update the specified machine:

clan machines update jon

You can also update all configured machines simultaneously by omitting the machine name:

clan machines update

Excluding a machine from `clan machine update`

To exclude machines from being updated when running clan machines update without any machines specified, one can set the clan.deployment.requireExplicitUpdate option to true:

buildClan {
    # ...
    machines = {
        "jon" = {
            clan.deployment.requireExplicitUpdate = true;
        };
    };
};

This is useful for machines that are not always online or are not part of the regular update cycle.