deployment.md

Deployment Guide

Prerequisites

• NixOS on the target machine(s)
• SSH access from the deployer to each node
• Nix flakes enabled (experimental-features = nix-command flakes in nix.conf)

Single node

git clone https://github.com/Sensorica/nixos-holochain
cd nixos-holochain

# Edit the host config for your machine
nano hosts/edgenode-01/configuration.nix

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#edgenode-01

Colmena prerequisites

Before running colmena apply, each host config must have:

1. A real hardware-configuration.nix — generated on the target machine:

   sudo nixos-generate-config --show-hardware-config > hosts/edgenode-XX/hardware-configuration.nix

2. The facilitator SSH public key committed to secrets/sensorica.pub:

   cp ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub secrets/sensorica.pub

Host configs already reference ../../secrets/sensorica.pub via authorizedKeys.keyFiles.

Fleet (Colmena)

# Deploy to all nodes in parallel
colmena apply --on @all

# Deploy to a single node
colmena apply --on edgenode-01

# Dry-run (shows what would change)
colmena apply --dry-run

Workshop ISO

# Build the ISO
nix build .#nixosConfigurations.workshop-iso.config.system.build.isoImage

# Flash to USB (replace /dev/sdX with your USB device)
sudo dd if=result/iso/*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress
sync

First boot sequence

1. NixOS boots
2. holochain-conductor.service starts (waits for network)
3. holochain-happ-installer.service runs once, installs configured hApps
4. Conductor is reachable on adminPort (default: 4444) and appPort (default: 8888)

Verifying the deployment

# Conductor status
systemctl status holochain-conductor

# Follow conductor logs
journalctl -u holochain-conductor -f

# Check hApp installer ran
systemctl status holochain-happ-installer
journalctl -u holochain-happ-installer

Rolling back

# Roll back to the previous NixOS generation
sudo nixos-rebuild --rollback

# List all generations
sudo nix-env --list-generations --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system