!CcTBuBritXGywOEGWJ:matrix.org

NixOS Binary Cache Self-Hosting

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About how to host a very large-scale binary cache and more58 Servers

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26 Jan 2026
@cinerealkiara:matrix.orgkiara

in the recent ticket on US dependencies (https://github.com/NixOS/org/issues/232), the idea came up to maybe add an EU-based nix cache (of at least the more important bits).

that makes me wonder, do we know what approach might be best for that, e.g. w.r.t. scaling/performance?
over time, i'd learned of options including:

  • s3-likes (e.g. garage?) with a front-end like:
    • niks3
    • attic
    • a reverse proxy (used in forkOS infra)
  • snix-cache
  • harmonia
13:04:40
@magic_rb:matrix.redalder.orgmagic_rbif i were to do this, id go for a distributed garage cluster and niks3. ofc ive no idea how that would behave13:14:16
@edef1c:matrix.orgedefvery little of this sort has been tested at c.n.o scale15:39:51
@edef1c:matrix.orgedefi think if we want to do this, it needs to be soft-launched such that we can fall back on the known-good infra15:43:01
@edef1c:matrix.orgedefand we need to know the codebases and their perf characteristics very well15:43:22
@edef1c:matrix.orgedefrealistically, whatever we pick, we will break something about it15:44:18
@edef1c:matrix.orgedefie this is actual work, someone practically needs to be on call for the migration at least, etc15:44:22
@magic_rb:matrix.redalder.orgmagic_rbi mean we can shadow roll it out and tell some folks to use it, with a big "if it fails switch to cache.nixos.org"16:27:45
@hexa:lossy.networkhexafrankly, some dumb selfhostable s3 should be enough16:33:43
@hexa:lossy.networkhexayou push the nix-cache-info file to it and let hydra handle the rest16:34:06
@hexa:lossy.networkhexamost of the features offered by niks and attic are also offered by the underlying s3 backend16:36:39
@hexa:lossy.networkhexawe don't require the binary cache to handle signing either16:36:50
@hexa:lossy.networkhexaa smart gc would be nice to have, but since we rebuild the whole thing every so often we can just cut off everything older than some interval16:37:53
@hexa:lossy.networkhexa* a smart gc would be nice to have, but since we rebuild everything in nixpkgs every so often we can just cut off everything older than some interval16:38:08
@magic_rb:matrix.redalder.orgmagic_rbwe should try something, we can always fall back to cache.nixos.org even on the DNS level if it fails16:47:35
@hexa:lossy.networkhexaattic is basically unmaintained17:01:14
@magic_rb:matrix.redalder.orgmagic_rbNiks3 is what we want, it doesnt sit in front of S3, just manages GC17:05:41
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