Usage with Flakes

Installation

colmena is included in Nixpkgs beginning with 21.11.

For this tutorial, use the following command to enter an ephemeral environment with the colmena command:

nix shell nixpkgs#colmena

If you are interested in trying out the bleeding-edge version of Colmena, Read the unstable version of the Manual for instructions.

Basic Configuration

Colmena reads the colmena output in your Flake.

Here is a short example:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
  };
  outputs = { nixpkgs, ... }: {
    colmena = {
      meta = {
        nixpkgs = import nixpkgs {
          system = "x86_64-linux";
          overlays = [];
        };
      };

      host-a = { name, nodes, pkgs, ... }: {
        boot.isContainer = true;
        time.timeZone = nodes.host-b.config.time.timeZone;
      };
      host-b = {
        deployment = {
          targetHost = "somehost.tld";
          targetPort = 1234;
          targetUser = "luser";
        };
        boot.isContainer = true;
        time.timeZone = "America/Los_Angeles";
      };
    };
  };
}

The full set of deployment options can be found here. You can also check out the example in the main tutorial for some inspiration.

Now you are ready to use Colmena! To build the configuration:

colmena build

To build and deploy to all nodes:

colmena apply

Next Steps

• Head to the Features section to see what else Colmena can do.
• Read more about options available in Colmena in the Reference section.