Add machines

Summary

Register machines in your Clan so they can be deployed to target devices.

Requirements

A Clan created during the previous step
direnv running in your Clan folder

Creating a Machine

clan machines create server

A dedicated folder will be created at machines/server. You can see the complete list of auto-loaded files in our extended documentation.

Configuring a Machine

You can edit your clan.nix file for additional machine features. This example demonstrates a setup with two machines and a few extra settings:

clan.nix

{
  inventory.machines = {
      server = {
          deploy.targetHost = "root@192.168.XXX.XXX";
          # Define tags here (optional)
          tags = [ ];
      };
      laptop = {
          # Define tags here (optional)
          tags = [ ];
      };
  };
  # Additional nixosConfiguration can also go in /machines/server/configuration.nix (autoloaded)
  machines = {
      server = { config, pkgs, ... }: {
          users.users.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [
              "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC…"
          ];
      };
  };
}

inventory.machines: Tags can be used to automatically assign services to a machine later on (don't worry, we don't need to set this now). Additional machines - like laptop in this example - will all be listed here if created via clan machines create $MACHINE_NAME

machines: It is advised to add the SSH key of your setup device's root user here - That will ensure you can always login to your new machine via ssh root@ip from your setup device in case something goes wrong.

Developer Note

The option: inventory.machines.$MACHINE_NAME is used to define metadata about the machine.

That includes for example deploy.targethost or machineClass or tags

The option: machines.$MACHINE_NAME is used to add extra nixosConfiguration to a machine

(Optional) Manually Create a `configuration.nix` instead

You can create the configuration file manually if you don't want to use the CLI commands

./machines/server/configuration.nix

{
    imports = [
        # enables GNOME desktop (optional)
        ../../modules/gnome.nix
    ];

    # Set nixosOptions here
    # Or import your own modules via 'imports'
}

(Optional) Removing a Machine

If you need to delete a machine...

...you can remove the entries both from your flake.nix and from the machines directory. For example, to remove laptop, use:

clan machines delete latop

Make sure to also remove or update any references to that machine in your Nix files and inventory.json

Checkpoint

Verify that your machines have been created successfully by listing them:

clan machines list

This should display all the machines you've created (e.g., server). If you don't see your machines listed, double-check the previous steps.

Up Next

In the next step, we will create and configure the users for the machines we just prepared.