nixos-mailserver VS nixos-generators

Hello. I have a server running NixOS. Webserver etc. works well and without problems. I tried to install the Simple NixOS Mailserver (https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver). After configure it the incoming mail works fine (IMAP: mail.domain.com on port 993) but the mails won't go out.

If you are familiar with NixOS, and like to have everything declared in Nix configuration, Simple NixOS Mailserver is very robust and easy to use. Have been using it for ~2 years.

https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver

I was able to set up a reliable email server using Simple NixOS Mailserver following the guide.

I just finished setting up my mail server on my nixos VPS (also huge thanks to nixos-infect devs), it was super easy. Just follow the guide and you have a working 10/10 mail server, I had no bumps along the way and everything just works. It even has flake support which I used. Check out the repo simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver.

I’ve been using nixos-mailserver for a while now: https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver It’s using dovecot and postfix.

If your willing to do some tinkering I recommend simple-nixos-mailserver. I don't use nixos much, but I do find its very good at this one thing.

If you have the option to install NixOS (or convert the preinstalled distro), I can recommend Simple NixOS Mailserver. It is a complete solution (postfix, dovecot, rspamd), and can easily be extended with roundcube webmail.

I recently got into running my own NixOS server—setting up Nextcloud[0], a website[1], DNS server and most recently a mail server[2] were all incredibly easy, in fact, setting up DNS records is more involved than configuring a mail server on NixOS! This was all done on a server with less than 10 GB of disk space as well.

With additional software such as NixOps, personal servers can also be easily spun up and provisioned.

While inevitably there are rough edges if you look deeply enough, I think the default OOTB experience has been incredible for use on a server and as a day-to-day distro. Highly predictable and declarative configurations is the way to go.

[0] https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/blob/ffaaacf8888a5c4167b...

[1] https://siraben.dev

[2] https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver

{ config, pkgs, ... }: let nixos-unstable = import { config = removeAttrs config.nixpkgs.config [ "packageOverrides" ]; }; in { imports = [ # Include the results of the hardware scan. ./hardware-configuration.nix (builtins.fetchTarball { url = "https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver/-/archive/nixos-21.05/nixos-mailserver-nixos-21.05.tar.gz"; sha256 = "1fwhb7a5v9c98nzhf3dyqf3a5ianqh7k50zizj8v5nmj3blxw4pi"; }) ]; disabledModules = [ "services/misc/mautrix-telegram.nix" "services/misc/matrix-synapse.nix" "services/misc/matrix-appservice-irc.nix" "services/web-apps/jitsi-meet.nix" "services/networking/jitsi-videobridge.nix" "services/networking/jicofo.nix" ]; nixpkgs = { overlays = [ # *snip* some local package definitions ]; config = { allowUnfree = true; packageOverrides = pkgs: { mautrix-telegram = nixos-unstable.mautrix-telegram; matrix-synapse = nixos-unstable.matrix-synapse; matrix-appservice-irc = nixos-unstable.matrix-appservice-irc; jitsi-meet = nixos-unstable.jitsi-meet; jitsi-meet-prosody = nixos-unstable.jitsi-meet-prosody; jitsi-videobridge = nixos-unstable.jitsi-videobridge; jitsi-videobridge2 = nixos-unstable.jitsi-videobridge2; jitsi = nixos-unstable.jitsi; jicofo = nixos-unstable.jicofo; util-linux = nixos-unstable.util-linux; # required by matrix-synapse }; }; }; # ...

I'm running matrix-synapse, nextcloud (in a nixos container), mumble, gitlab, vaultwarden, some game servers (i.e. Minecraft) and even my own mailserver with simple-nixos-mailserver.

https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators

Those Linode instructions are about installing an OS from an installation ISO from Linode's rescue mode. -- I'd consider that more a 'plus' to Linode that you get to be able to install whatever unsupported Linux on Linode's VMs. But, of course it's not as smooth as the officially supported images.

Sibling comment mentions that NixOS provides ways to build VM images (e.g. https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators has a generator specifically for Linode).

Another option is to use nixos-infect, which will replace a Linux distribution with a NixOS distribution. https://github.com/elitak/nixos-infect

> At that point, I feel like all of the repeatability gains are gone. If I want to spin up a fresh server, I have to read a guide and set stuff up by hand?

Just as with ansible, "git pull to deploy". You'd keep a copy of your NixOS configuration.nix somewhere else, and would be able to apply it later.

> it really does let me just get a new VPS and deploy to it very fast

Using a tool you're familiar with to get the job done is going to be faster than learning to use a tool you're unfamiliar with.

I believe much of the use of NixOS is for hobby stuff, and for personal machines. (c.f. "In what environments do you use Nix", Development (1242) vs Home Server (845) vs Production (386) https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2022-nix-survey-results/18983).

If you need to generate lxc container in NixOS then perhaps this repo might be useful: https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators this article uses it https://www.thedroneely.com/posts/running-nixos-linux-containers/

You might wanna check out nix-community/nixos-generators, it’s maintained by the same dude as Disko

You can look at nixos-generators for support code that well let you take existing configs and build a variety of bootable images from them.

You should take a look at NixOS Generators, it's a flake with configs to build common formats like ISO, LXC, Docker, etc. I use that to generate an ISO with my config, specifically the packages.iso section.

I am trying to make use of https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators to generate qcow2 images from a NixOs configuration. Since it will be used with Scaleway, they require an efi bootable image.

I haven't migrated machines from one vm provider to vmware, but I have provided a number of pregenerated nixos images (along the line of https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators) to clients to install onto vmware (and other - hyperv, xen, qemu, physical) hosts.