I’ve been working on this project for a few days now and I’d like to formally announce it here:
chat.nixos.dev offers accounts on the Matrix homeserver nixos.dev to everyone that is a member of the NixOS organization on GitHub for Nix(OS) and F/OSS related activities.
The idea is to provide a service that is independent of matrix.org or everyones ability (or willingness) to run their own homeserver.
Accounts will be created during the first login and usernames default to your GitHub handle in the local part (e.g. @andir:nixos.dev in my case). There is no password authentication available for regular users. The sole source of authentication is your GitHub account.
Sign in is done using OpenID Connect (OIDC) and requires public membership within the NixOS organization. If you are greeted with an error message that says you are not a member of the required GitHub organization (but you actually are) double check if you have your status set to public. There is as guide on how to change the visibility.
During first sign in you might be greeted with GitHub’s authorization dialog where you can “Request” access for this particular “App” from a given GitHub organization. You do NOT have to request any additional permissions. If you do request permissions you are just wasting the time of those administrating the GitHub organization. They’ll get a notification for each and every request.
The service is operated on a best-effort basis by myself and is in no way an official offering by the NixOS project.
The data on the server is backed up to multiple places throughout Europe. Recovery from a disaster should be feasible with data loss of about a day (or less).
If you have any questions/remarks or are going to use the service please feel free to join the Matrix channel #meta:nixos.dev.
Happy hacking^Wchatting!
andi-
Haven’t been able to use the server since sometime yesterday; can you check up on it please?