and I want to find a way to streamline the process of adding new nodes to my NixOS network. im looking into the idea of custom ISOs right now, which would allow me to live USB boot onto a computer with things like master computer's SSH keys added, flakes/git/vim enabled, etc.

But this again only takes me halfway there, since even if I get to a stage where colmena/deploy-rs CAN interact with the target host over SSH correctly, the nixosConfiguration will be invalid due to things like fileSystems."/" being unset (which is usually handled by hardware-configuration.nix)

does anyone have any pointers/tips they can share with how to make this easier?

  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    (self: super: {
      colmena = super.colmena.overrideAttrs (old: rec {
        patches = [ ];
        src = super.fetchFromGitHub {
          owner = "zhaofengli";
          repo = "colmena";
          rev = "5e0fbc4dbc50b3a38ecdbcb8d0a5bbe12e3f9a72";
          hash = "sha256-vwu354kJ2fjK1StYmsi/M2vGQ2s72m+t9pIPHImt1Xw=";
        };
        cargoDeps = self.rustPlatform.fetchCargoVendor {
          inherit src;
          hash = "sha256-v5vv66x+QiDhSa3iJ3Kf7PC8ZmK1GG8QdVD2a1L0r6M=";
        };
      });
    })
  ];

nixpkgs.overlays = [
    (self: super: {
      colmena = super.colmena.overrideAttrs (old: rec {
        patches = [ ];
        src = super.fetchFromGitHub {
          owner = "zhaofengli";
          repo = "colmena";
          rev = "5e0fbc4dbc50b3a38ecdbcb8d0a5bbe12e3f9a72";
          hash = "sha256-vwu354kJ2fjK1StYmsi/M2vGQ2s72m+t9pIPHImt1Xw=";
        };
        cargoDeps = self.rustPlatform.fetchCargoVendor {
          inherit src;
          hash = "sha256-v5vv66x+QiDhSa3iJ3Kf7PC8ZmK1GG8QdVD2a1L0r6M=";
        };
      });
    })
  ];

You don't need to manually make the overlay. You can either use colmena.overlays.default or take the package from colmena.packages.x86_64-linux.colmena directly. I do think it's worth it to have an example in the docs (which is busted right now) even though it follows the common flake pattern, another entry in the todo list

Another useful command is nix flake show github:zhaofengli/colmena which shows what a flake exports

gotcha. but im trying to run with the target laptop connected to ethernet (which i verified with ip a) and im still running into the error where

gotcha. but im trying to run with the target laptop connected to ethernet (which i verified with ip a) and im still running into the error where

ssh: connect to host thinkpad port 22: Connection timed out

gotcha. but now im trying to run with the target laptop connected to ethernet (which i verified with ip a) and im still running into the error where

ssh: connect to host thinkpad port 22: Connection timed out

In reply to @zsuper:matrix.org
this does limit you to machines that are connected to the network via ethernet right? i was about to try this with an old laptop of mine, but i realized that nixos-anywhere does not support Wifi installation

In reply to @zsuper:matrix.org
and disko will still take care of formatting for you right? because thats the main part about minimal installers that im still uncomfortable with