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Layout

Here is the typical directory layout for using bento for the non-flakes system router, a single flake my-laptop for the system t470, and a flake with multiples configuration in all-flakes-systems:

├── hosts
│   ├── router
│   │   ├── configuration.nix
│   │   ├── hardware-configuration.nix
│   │   └── utils -> ../../utils/
│   ├── all-flakes-systems
│   │   ├── configuration.nix
│   │   ├── flake.lock
│   │   ├── flake.nix
│   │   ├── hardware-configuration.nix
│   │   └── utils -> ../../utils/
│   └── my-laptop
│       ├── configuration.nix
│       ├── default-spec.nix
│       ├── flake.lock
│       ├── flake.nix
│       ├── hardware-configuration.nix
│       ├── home.nix
│       ├── minecraft.nix
│       ├── nfs.nix
│       ├── nvidia.nix
│       └── utils -> ../../utils/
├── README.md
└── utils
    └── bento.nix
    └── common-stuff.nix
    └── fleet.nix

Workflow

  1. make configuration changes per host in hosts/ or a global include file in utils (you can rename it as you wish)
  2. run sudo bento deploy to verify, build every system, and publish the configuration files on the SFTP server
  3. hosts will pickup changes and run a rebuild

Get started with bento

  1. bento init
  2. copy the configuration file of the server in a subdirectory of hosts, add fleet.nix to it
  3. add keys to fleet.nix
  4. run bento deploy as root
  5. follow deployment with bento status
  6. add new hosts keys to fleet.nix and their configuration in your hosts directory

Adding a new host

Here are the steps to add a server named kikimora to bento:

asciicast

  1. generate a ssh-key on kikimora for root user
  2. add kikimora's public key to bento fleet.nix file
  3. reconfigure the ssh host to allow kikimora's key (it should include the fleet.nix file)
  4. copy kikimora's config (usually /etc/nixos/) in bento hosts/kikimora/ directory
  5. add utils/bento.nix to its config (in hosts/kikimora run ln -s ../../utils . and add ./utils/bento.nix in imports list)
  6. check kikimora's config locally with bento build dry-build, you can check only kikimora with env NAME=kikimora bento build dry-build
  7. populate the chroot with sudo bento deploy to copy the files in /home/chroot/kikimora/config/
  8. run bootstrap script on kikimora to switch to the new configuration from sftp and enable the timer to poll for upgrades
  9. you can get bento's log with journalctl -u bento-upgrade.service and see next timer information with systemctl status bento-upgrade.timer

Deploying changes

Here are the steps to deploy a change in a host managed with bento

  1. edit its configuration file to make the changes in hosts/the_host_name/something.nix
  2. run sudo bento deploy to build and publish configuration files
  3. wait for the timer of that system to trigger the update, or ask the user to open http://localhost:51337/ to force the update

If you don't want to wait for the timer, you can ssh into the machine to run systemctl start bento-upgrade.service

Track each host state

As each host is sending a log upon rebuild to tell if it failed or succeeded, the files are used to check what happened since the sftp file last_time_changed was created.

Using bento status you can track the current state of each hosts (time since last update, current NixOS version, status report).

Bento will display the current state of the fleet, and wait for a change in the chroot directory to display the status again.

asciicast

Update all flakes

With bento flake-update you can easily update your flakes recursively to the latest version.

A parameter can be added to only update a given source with, i.e to update all nixpkgs in the flakes bento flake-update nixpkgs.

Show differences between a running system version and its new version

With env NAME=my-laptop bento diff you can display the differences of packages between what my-laptop is running and its new version.

The output should look like this:

Changes in x1 between p50qql7f42rl0fccdwxw45k21pnqb9ii-nixos-system-x1-22.11.20220921.d6490a0 and 7zfxxddmg8l6qc6bksar5gm62ylwsdv5-nixos-system-x1-22.11.20220927.7e52b35
bind: 9.18.6 → 9.18.7
cpupower: 5.19.9, 5.19.9_fish → 5.19.11, 5.19.11_fish
gh: 2.15.0, 2.15.0_fish → 2.16.1, 2.16.1_fish
imagemagick: 7.1.0-48 → 7.1.0-49, +18.0 KiB
initrd-linux: 5.19.9 → 5.19.11
libblockdev: 2.26 → 2.28
libbytesize: 2.6 → 2.7
libdmtx: 0.7.5 → 0.7.7
linux: 5.19.9, 5.19.9-modules → 5.19.11, 5.19.11-modules, +126.6 KiB
man: -11.8 KiB
nixos: +12.5 KiB
nixos-system-x1: 22.11.20220921.d6490a0 → 22.11.20220927.7e52b35
opencv: 4.5.4 → 4.6.0, +1901.6 KiB
plasma-workspace: +62.4 KiB
root-authorized_keys: ∅ → ε
source: +701.9 KiB
systemsettings: +62.6 KiB
-------------

Push a configuration to a remote system

It's possible to use bento in a push model using TARGET_IP:

env TARGET_IP=10.43.43.1 NAME=myserver bento build switch

If the remote system is using a non-standard port, you need to define the according ssh option with NIX_SSHOPTS:

env NIX_SSHOPTS="-p2222" TARGET_IP=10.43.43.1 NAME=laptop bento build switch