added draft versions of Paged Out! articles.

content/posts/nixos-easy-host.md

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+title = "Running non Nixpkgs services on NixOS, the lazy way"
+date = 2025-03-20T14:09:14+01:00
+draft = true
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+
+NixOS is really nice for self hosting.
+Anything that has a NixOS module can be hosted in a few lines of nix code.
+But what if the service we want to host doesn't come with a NixOS module written for us already in Nixpkgs?
+This is where NixOS can be a little hard, as a guide on setting up a service in Debian or Arch will rarely work on NixOS.
+Of course, the 'nix way' would be to write your own package and module for it, but that can be a daunting task.
+Here are some 'escape hatches' to host some of the simpler services without having to write your own Nix package or module.
+
+## Nginx
+
+If the application is a simple static website, containing just HTML and JS,
+the `nginx` module on NixOS provides us with a way to manage virtual hosts complete with https.
+Shown is how I host my Hugo generated blog.
+
+```nix
+{ config, ... }: {
+  services.nginx.virtualHosts."gabevenberg.com" = {
+      enableACME = true;
+      forceSSL = true;
+      root = "/var/www/gabevenberg.com";
+  };
+  security.acme = {
+    acceptTerms = true;
+    defaults.email = "myname@example.com";
+  };
+  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [443 80];
+}
+```
+The complete list of options for virtual hosts can be found [here](https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options#opt-services.nginx.virtualHosts)
+
+## Docker
+If the service publishes a Docker image, one can just run that on NixOS.
+Here's how I host a game server using a premade docker container.
+Things get a bit more complicated with docker-compose,
+but one can use [compose2nix](https://github.com/aksiksi/compose2nix) to translate a docker-compose.yaml file into a nix file much like the one shown.
+```nix
+{ config, ... }: {
+  virtualisation.oci-containers = {
+    backend = "docker";
+    containers.factorio = {
+      image = "factoriotools/factorio:stable";
+      volumes = ["/storage/factorio:/factorio"];
+      hostname = "factorio";
+      ports = ["34197:34197/tcp"];
+      environment = {UPDATE_MODS_ON_START = "true";};
+    };
+  };
+  virtualisation.docker.enable = true;
+}
+```
+
+There are, of course, more options for the oci-containers module, found [here](https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options#opt-virtualisation.oci-containers.containers)
+
+## Systemd
+
+Finally, if the service is composed of a single static binary, NixOS makes it really easy to write Systemd services.
+(I've used a package in Nixpkgs here,
+but you could just as easily point the Systemd service to a binary you threw in `/opt/` or somewhere.)
+
+```nix
+{ config, ... }: {
+  systemd.services.miniserve = {
+    wantedBy = ["multi-user.target"];
+    after = ["network.target"];
+    description = "A directory miniserve instance";
+    environment = {MINISERVE_ENABLE_TAR_GZ="true";}
+    serviceConfig.ExecStart = "${pkgs.miniserve}/bin/miniserve -i 127.0.0.1 -- /storage/miniserve"
+  };
+}
+
+```
+And like the last 2 times, the complete list of options for Systemd service can be found [here](https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options.html#opt-systemd.services)
+
+
+*(This article was originally published in issue #6 of the [Paged Out!](https://pagedout.institute/) magazine.)*