nix-flavour

NixOS Configuration

Multi-host NixOS configuration using flakes, a single parameterised host template, Home Manager as a flake module, and Stylix-driven theming.

Last verified: 2026-09-01 against nixos-unstable (NixOS 26.11).

Hosts

All three run the same Wayland session — see Desktop below.

p510 is the always-on media server: never build or deploy it without asking first. Heavy razer rebuilds should be built on p620 (just deploy-via-p620 razer).

DEX5550 is offline; Samsung and HP are decommissioned. References in older docs are stale.

Architecture

• Single parameterised host template at hosts/templates/desktop.nix (selects between workstation and laptop profiles via the profile argument). Surfaced through lib/hostTypes.nix as hostTypes.workstation / hostTypes.laptop. The previous server/hybrid/base templates were removed; p510 also uses the workstation template, overriding only what genuinely differs.
• Hardware GPU profiles in hosts/common/hardware-profiles/ (amd, nvidia, intel-integrated).
• Feature flags drive module enablement (see lib/features.nix).
• Module tree under modules/ is imported explicitly by the template; there is no auto-discovery.
• Overlays are split by purpose under overlays/: default.nix, custom-packages.nix, cmake-compat.nix, python-compat.nix, upstream-fixes.nix, citrix-workspace.nix.
• Theming is centralised through Stylix (base16 palette), whose source of truth is the active Omarchy theme — see Theming. Dependent surfaces — Plymouth, GRUB, the console, GTK, Qt, GNOME Terminal — derive their colours from config.lib.stylix.colors. The standalone nix-colors input has been removed.
• Home Manager is loaded as a flake module from flake.nix. Do not run home-manager switch directly; user environments are activated by the system rebuild.

Desktop

One Wayland session on every host: Omarchy on Hyprland, packaged for NixOS as Nixarchy and consumed as a flake input. GNOME stays installed and selectable as a fallback. Everything else — niri, labwc, mango, Noctalia, DankMaterialShell — is gone, including the flake inputs. COSMIC is parked, not removed.

Wired per host in hosts/<host>/nixos/nixarchy.nix plus shared fragments under hosts/common/nixos/omarchy-*.nix.

Three things are easy to get wrong:

• programs.hyprland is enabled by the Nixarchy module, not by us. It supplies the portal, uwsm and the wayland-session basics, so it cannot be turned off — but it also registers a second, indistinguishable Hyprland login entry. omarchy-sole-hyprland.nix forces the module off and restates what Nixarchy needs. Read that file before touching anything Hyprland-adjacent; the two obvious workarounds both fail.
• Hyprland config here is Lua, not hyprlang. Dispatchers are namespaced: hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.dpms({ action = "enable" })'. The string form ("dpms on") silently does nothing.
• Two files at the flake root are written by Omarchy, because a flake cannot read outside its own tree: nixarchy-apps.nix (by nixarchy-apply) and nixarchy-theme.nix (by omarchy theme set). Both leave the tree dirty, and nhs refuses a dirty tree.

Full detail: docs/architecture/desktop.md.

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/olafkfreund/nixos_config.git ~/.config/nixos
cd ~/.config/nixos
just validate                 # Configuration validation
just test-host p620           # Build a host without switching
just <host>                   # Build and switch (p620 / p510 / razer)

Routine Update + Deploy

The recommended flow for the common case (bump lock, commit, push, build, switch) — works for local and remote hosts, refuses to run with a dirty tree, and never orphans a lock:

nhs                           # current host, nixpkgs scope (zsh shortcut)
nhs razer                     # remote deploy via SSH (nh --target-host)
nhs p510 all                  # update all flake inputs, deploy p510
nhs razer home-manager        # bump a single input

# Without the alias:
just update-commit-deploy [HOST] [SCOPE]

# Pre-build for a currently offline host (commit + build now, deploy later):
nhsb razer

Full reference: docs/UPDATE-DEPLOY.md.

Directory Layout

flake.nix                       Main flake (inputs, outputs, host wiring)
Justfile                        Automation recipes (just --list)
lib/                            Shared functions (hostTypes, features, secrets)
modules/                        Feature modules (explicit imports only)
overlays/                       Split nixpkgs overlays
hosts/
  templates/desktop.nix         Single parameterised template (workstation | laptop)
  common/                       Shared host fragments + hardware-profiles
  p620/  p510/  razer/          Per-host configurations
home/                           Home Manager modules
  profiles/                     Role-based profiles (developer, server-admin, ...)
Users/<user>/<host>_home.nix    Per-user, per-host Home Manager entry
secrets/                        agenix-encrypted secrets (.age)
checks/                         flake checks (nix flake check)
scripts/                        Operational scripts
docs/                           Documentation
assets/wallpapers/              Centralised wallpapers (consumed by Stylix)

Common Commands

# Validation
just check-syntax               # Nix syntax pass
just validate-quick             # Fast validation
just validate                   # Full validation
just test-host <host>           # Build a host without switching

# Deployment
just deploy                     # Local switch
just <host>                     # Build + switch a specific host
just quick-deploy <host>        # Deploy only if the closure changed
just update-commit-deploy <host> [scope]   # See docs/UPDATE-DEPLOY.md
nhs [host] [scope]              # zsh shortcut for the above

# Maintenance
just cleanup                    # GC old generations
just update-flake               # nix flake update (no commit)
just secrets                    # Interactive secrets manager
just --list                     # All recipes

Feature Flags

Hosts compose functionality through flags rather than direct service configuration. Example (from hosts/p620/configuration.nix):

features = {
  development.enable = true;
  desktop.enable = true;
  virtualization = {
    enable = true;
    docker = true;
  };
};

Adding a new service: create a module under modules/services/<name>.nix exposing features.<name> options, then import it explicitly from the template or host. Do not place services.* = { ... } blocks directly in hosts/*/configuration.nix.

Secrets

Encrypted with agenix; decrypted at activation time only.

just secrets                                    # Interactive manager
./scripts/manage-secrets.sh create <name>
./scripts/manage-secrets.sh edit   <name>
./scripts/manage-secrets.sh rekey

Always reference secrets by path, never read them at evaluation time:

# Correct — runtime load
services.myapp.passwordFile = config.age.secrets.myapp-password.path;

# Wrong — embeds the secret in /nix/store
services.myapp.password = builtins.readFile "/secrets/password";

Access control lives in secrets.nix (per-host and per-user public keys).

Razer: Secure Boot

razer boots via lanzaboote (v1.1.0) with systemd-initrd. Because the firmware ships a locked Setup Mode, MOK enrollment is handled by a shim+MOK module (modules/razer/...) that wraps lzbt and points pkiBundle at /var/lib/sbctl (the sbctl 0.18 default).

Kernel is linuxPackages_latest (7.0.1) because 6.18.24 + nvidia-open failed to boot. hosts/razer/nixos/boot.nix documents the fallback: pin 6.18.22 via a separate module if 7.0.1 also fails.

The ESP is 511 MiB against ~149 MiB of NVIDIA-firmware initrd per generation, so it holds very few generations. --clean escalates to a single generation rather than failing its own threshold.

Theming

• Source of truth: the active Omarchy theme. omarchy theme set X retints Omarchy's own 24 files immediately and a theme-set.d hook writes X into nixarchy-theme.nix at the flake root; modules/desktop/stylix-theme.nix maps that theme's colors.toml onto base16 and feeds Stylix. Everything Omarchy cannot reach at runtime follows at the next rebuild, not instantly.
• Reach the package through inputs.nixarchy, never config.programs.nixarchy.package — nixarchy consumes Stylix, so that closes the module fixpoint and evaluation dies with infinite recursion.
• Surfaces: config.lib.stylix.colors (base16 scheme) drives Plymouth, GRUB, the console, GTK, Qt, fonts, cursor, icons and GNOME Terminal.
• assets/wallpapers/ contains all wallpapers; the active wallpaper is selected by the per-host theme module.
• COSMIC: a writer derivation produces the full RON palette (30 fields) from the base16 scheme. COSMIC itself is parked (desktop.cosmic.enable = false everywhere); the writer stays wired.
• GNOME profile: shared home/profiles/desktop-user/profile.nix and the desktop.gnome.profile module unify the wiring; the desktop.displayManager module unifies display-manager selection.
• host.class (enum) is used to gate desktop-only Stylix targets so headless hosts don't pull GNOME assets.

Removed Infrastructure

The following are intentionally absent from the current configuration:

• Prometheus / Grafana / Loki / Alertmanager monitoring stack — system insight is now via journalctl, systemctl, and per-service logs. Older docs still list grafana-status / prometheus-status helpers; those commands no longer exist.
• niri, labwc, mango, Noctalia and DankMaterialShell — modules, sessions, greeters and flake inputs. Anything describing dms-shell.nix, "Niri (DMS)", "Hyprland (DMS)" or ${DESK_SHELL:-noctalia} is describing a tree that no longer exists.
• A binary cache of our own. There is no nix-serve/harmonia anywhere in the repo and nothing listens on p620:5000. modules/nix/nix.nix substitutes from cache.nixos.org and nix-community.cachix.org; flake.nix adds cuda-maintainers and devenv as flake-level extra-substituters. Tailscale is used for remote SSH, not caching.
• nix-colors input (replaced by Stylix base16).
• termshark, wireshark, reddix, wasistlos, steampipe modules and the standalone cosmic-applet-package-updater chain.
• vim from the base user package set (Home Manager vimAlias handles it).
• cosmic-ext-applet-radio as an upstream input — replaced by a local module workaround for an upstream mkPackageOption/description bug.

Development Workflow

gh issue develop <n> --checkout    # Branch from issue
just test-host <host>              # Build the change
just validate                      # Syntax + checks + flake check
git commit -m "type(scope): summary (#n)"
gh pr create --fill                # Open PR
nhs <host>                         # After merge: lock-aware deploy

Automated Package Updates

Four packages are tracked here rather than taken from nixpkgs, because we follow their upstreams faster than nixpkgs does. Every release used to mean a manual version + hash bump.

.github/workflows/package-autoupdate.yml does it nightly at 03:43 UTC: resolve upstream → rewrite version + hash → build → open PR → merge. The config is updated before you wake up. Deploying stays manual.

Design

The logic lives in scripts/, not in YAML. Each script is idempotent, writes nothing when already current, and has a --check mode. The bump you get at 03:43 is one you can run and debug by hand:

./scripts/update-warp-terminal.sh --check   # exit 1 if a bump is available
./scripts/update-antigravity.sh             # apply it

The workflow then reduces to: run script → did git diff change anything → build → merge. No update logic is trapped in a YAML run: block where it can only be tested by pushing a commit.

Verification runs inline, then the same job merges. Pull requests opened with GITHUB_TOKEN do not trigger other workflows, so ci.yml never runs on them and gh pr merge --auto would wait forever on checks that never arrive. The job that merges is therefore the job that built it.

max-parallel: 1. Each matrix leg merges to main; running them concurrently just leaves the later ones rebasing against a moved base.

Traps worth knowing

Most of these cost real debugging time. If you are building something similar, they are the reason this page exists.

• magic-nix-cache is retired. It fails with Cache service responded with 400 and Our services aren't available right now. Replaced with cachix/cachix-action against our own cache.
• Check that your cache secret actually exists. update-flake.yml had referenced secrets.CACHIX_AUTH_TOKEN since the day it was written, but the secret was never set — so the step was a silent no-op and every CI run rebuilt from source. cachix-action does not fail loudly on an empty token.
• Actions cannot open PRs by default. The job dies with GitHub Actions is not permitted to create or approve pull requests. It is a repository setting, not a workflow permission:

  gh api -X PUT repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/permissions/workflow \
    -f default_workflow_permissions=write \
    -F can_approve_pull_request_reviews=true

• Verify the attribute you actually changed. The antigravity job built pkgs.antigravity-cli, which resolves to a flake input's package — ours is pkgs.customPkgs.antigravity-cli, a different derivation at a different version. The gate passed green without touching a single file the script had rewritten. A build gate pointed at the wrong attribute is worse than no gate, because it reads as proof.
• Never trust an upstream index to be sorted. Anthropic's apt Packages file lists every historical release in arbitrary order. Reading it top-down returned a version 11,000 releases behind the one we had pinned — and it would have built fine, silently downgrading the package by more than a year. sort -V is load-bearing.
• Anchor rewrites on a key, not a position. The claude-code derivation carries one hash per platform. A positional sed will happily swap them, and the mistake only surfaces as a hash mismatch on the architecture you do not build.

Troubleshooting

just check-syntax                  # Syntax errors
just diff <host>                   # Pending closure delta
nix flake check --show-trace       # Detailed evaluation errors
journalctl -u <service> -f         # Follow service logs
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --rollback   # Roll back to previous generation

Documentation

• docs/UPDATE-DEPLOY.md — nhs / just update-commit-deploy reference (local + remote).
• docs/PATTERNS.md — NixOS patterns and best practices (read before writing modules).
• docs/NIXOS-ANTI-PATTERNS.md — Anti-patterns and review checklist.
• docs/architecture/desktop.md — Nixarchy / Omarchy on Hyprland: sessions, theming, screen sharing.
• docs/applications/sunshine.md — Sunshine streaming on p510 and its four traps.
• docs/hosts/p510.md — p510: media stack, k3s, the self-hosted CI runner, and its known quirks.
• docs/MCP-GUIDE.md — MCP server integration.
• docs/guides/GITHUB-WORKFLOW.md — Issue-driven development workflow.
• docs/guides/CACHE-STRATEGY.md — Binary cache configuration.
• docs/guides/PACKAGE-SYSTEM-USAGE.md — Package categorisation.
• docs/README.md — Full documentation index.

License

See LICENSE.