"This is fucking brilliant. Nobody needs this, nobody has a real use for this and this definitely does not attract girls. Still, I'll try this and probably love it. -Tim Goeree"

As Yet Unreproducible

• User passwords -> Managed with sops-nix
• Spotify login
• Firefox login

Adding Secrets with sops-nix

Secrets are stored in configs/secrets/secrets.yaml. You can edit these secrets with sops secrets.yaml given you have an age private key stored at ~/.config/sops/age/keys.txt.

To decrypt these secrets with sops-nix during a rebuild, you must add your host public key to the .sops.yaml file. Generate it with cat /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | ssh-to-age, add it to the file, then run sops updatekeys secrets.yaml.

Provisioning A New Machine

On the target system, boot into the NixOS installer and run:

# Create a password for the nixos user for SSH access.
passwd

# Start wpa_supplicant and connect to a wifi network.
sudo systemctl start wpa_supplicant
wpa_cli
> add_network
> set_network 0 ssid "SSID"
> set_network 0 psk "password"
> enable_network 0
> quit

# Get the IP address of the target system.
ip addr

On the host machine, run the following command to build the new system configuration and copy it over SSH along with the sops age key and ssh keys.

# WARNING: You must use the IP address of the machine.
# The hostname will not suffice as it will boot into a NixOS installer through kexec.
deploy --flake .#<hostname> --target-host <username>@<ip_address>

Complete the setup by running the following on the target system once it is booted into the new install.

# On the target machine:
sudo rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
sudo ssh-keygen -A
cat /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | ssh-to-age

# On the host machine:
# Add the host age public key to .sops.yaml
sops updatekeys secrets.yaml

Hardening

[!NOTE] Thanks to https://blog.notashelf.dev/posts/2025-03-03-insecurities-remedies-i.html for this section!

Systemd services where appropriate are hardened using systemd.services.<servicename>.serviceConfig:

• Protected from modifying the system clock
• Protected from modifying kernel parameters, modules or logs
• Whitelists syscalls
• Restricts namespaces the service is allowed to use, or changing its user or group
• Restricts realtime access
• Restricts setting memory as writable and executable

Acknowledgements

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwfKlX3rA6E for piquing my interest in this OS in the first place
• https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/ for teaching me about nix, nixos, flakes, and home-manager in an extremely easy to follow and well-documented fashion
• https://blog.notashelf.dev/posts/2025-02-24-ssh-signing-commits.html for teaching me how to trivially sign my commits
• https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/fsummx/comment/fm3jbcm/ for an easy way to list all installed packages (nix-store --query --requisites /run/current-system | cut -d- -f2- | sort | uniq)