How do I configure discourse as service with custom options?

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1

I’m working on running discourse, which is conveniently bundled in nixpkgs. I’ve run it elsewhere, manually building a docker container and running the install processes.

It seems that in widely prevailing nix installation patterns, you would add this to a configuration.nix file to define a server’s configuration.nix.

I’m running nix on debian 11, as a standalone package manager, in a multi-user installation. I’m standing up the service on a machine I administrate with several other users, and I would like a general way of standing up nix-provided services and ensuring that other users have visibility—at least into starting and stopping them, but also permission to modify configuration. I plan to host other services with this as well, including at least MediaWiki.

I’ve been unable to find how nixpkgs search - discourse the strong conventions that this package uses, are expected to be invoked. I frequently run into this inferential gap in nix. I have gone through Nix Pills 7 & 8, reviewing in more detail how to make a derivation in practice, and now I know more precise words for the things I don’t know, as well as more of the structure of how it’s evaluated.

Evidently I need some root, system-base configuration, or else e.g. home-manager.

It’s unclear to me:

  • what to pass in, in the services or security “sets”
  • or else, how they are called, or with what [function / definition].

I learned much about how to specify configuration options in the manual.
https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#module-services-discourse

services.discourse = {
  enable = true;
  hostname = "discourse.example.com";
  admin = {
    email = "admin@example.com";
    username = "admin";
    fullName = "Administrator";
    passwordFile = "/path/to/password_file";
  };
  secretKeyBaseFile = "/path/to/secret_key_base_file";
};
security.acme.email = "me@example.com";
security.acme.acceptTerms = true;

However, I’m unclear how to generate a base configuration that I would plug this into, especially a base configuration that would appropriately use and set up the content of the services and security Nix-lang sets.

The description of the options does not make it clearer how to invoke them, and mostly seems to contain English descriptions of fairly evocatively named “configuration paths”.

https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options.html#opt-services.discourse.database

In summary:

  • How do I define a base system that this would fit into? (And please restate this question in more nix-specific language)
  • What invokes and applies the services and security configurations for the whole system?
  • Where, or how, can i define a system that makes it easy for other admins to understand, use, and update? (A link to a good example, of nix services configured (on a non-NixOS-base) system, might suffice to answer this whole question).
2

It looks like I should indeed put this in configuration.nix, in /etc/nix, IIUC.

What are the ways (the best ways, but any, to start) to test a service’s configuration without a complete deployment. I guess I can follow the flake packaging advice?

3

You can try using system-manager to get nixos like configuration on non nixos systems.

I doubt though that discourse is already supported, you probably would need to write your own module, or adjust the nixOS module, such that it works with system-manager.

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