What are good options for managing a non-Nix server? We have some Raspberry Pi's running Raspbian that I want to keep consistent. I know back in the day Ansible, Salt and Puppet were options... what should I consider these days?
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One option I'm considering is building an entire Pi image with Nix and just using that.
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I have a couple of PCs with a minimal Debian + single user Nix to allow it to run the same code as NixOS PCs. The Debian config doesn't change much (mostly just network). I build on NixOS, then use set one of the NixOS PCs as binary cache.
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All code is then bundled in a single derivation. From the Debian machine, updating is:
nix-store --extra-substituters http://my-nixos -r $STOREPATH --indirect --add-root ~/.my-env
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But this is mostly for build and test tools etc, not daemons, which might be more what you're interested in.
Another even dumber way doesn't require Nix on the remote machine:
nix-store --query --requisites "$STOREPATH"
Gives a list that can be rsynced to a remote host
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I've not attempted building entire images. Seems risky. Getting the other machine to a state where rsync + ssh work using a different Linux distribution seems to be simpler. Then all custom bits can be Nix packages.
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