nixfiles VS impermanence

If you're familiar with Python, I have a script which does that (along with a few other metrics): https://github.com/barrucadu/nixfiles/blob/1c99414156a7081ade210a9f43a3941b44a4ef0b/hosts/nyarlathotep/jobs/hledger-export-to-promscale.py

I run a lot of services through docker containers, here's how I structure things: https://github.com/barrucadu/nixfiles/blob/master/services/concourse.nix

I do. I have a fairly small chunk of configuration to stick all persistent state I care about in a different ZFS dataset (mounted to /persist) and do the rollback.

It's what I do.

You can see the relevant bit of my config on github.

My solution - which is not great, mind you - is to have my NixOS config defined across two git repos: one is public, the other is private and has all the secrets.

All my nixos config is on github.

You might want to set up NixOS with impermanence, with something like https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence. Install an easy to use desktop environment like ElementaryOS, and configure NixOS with or without Flatpak, if you want to give the user the ability to install new software or not. Then set up automatic updates, automatic garbage collection and you have a truly stable system.

I would not call these projects unbelievable, but they are neat.

- Opt-in state: https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence and https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/

That way will work - I use the impermanence module which works similarly but allows to hide mounts.

This is indeed a blind spot. Thanks for pointing that out! Silverblue -to my knowledge- doesn't do a lot to address this. Though, 3rd-party tools like Home Manager and the suite of applications developed by the folks over at uBlue might be able to limit this to a minimum. Though I'm not sure if it surpasses NixOS in this regard; for the uninitiated. Though, to my knowledge, this requires special attention and depends on the specifics of the NixOS system in question.

[3]: https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence

I have recently stumbled upon Impermanence - modules to help you handle persistent state on systems with ephemeral root storage, and the concept seems quite nice.

I haven't used it yet but nix-community/impermanence has a home-manager module that might be useful.

Some files in /etc (like saved networks) will still not be managed by NixOS, if you want to have full control over them use Impermanence

{ imports = [ (modulesPath + "/installer/scan/not-detected.nix") "${builtins.fetchGit { url = "https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware.git"; }}/system76" "${builtins.fetchGit { url = "https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence.git"; }}/nixos.nix" ];