SSH to my NixOS

Since my macOS using arm64, I can't develop x64 apps on my NixOS, at least it's not as simple as on native machine. Thus, I always have a good reason to ssh to my NixOS and work on it, but I never do that since I'm lazy! This is a journey about how I be able to ssh to my NixOS desktop.

1. Configure Router

First thing is let router preserves a DHCP IP for NixOS MAC, where to configure it is depends on your router.

2. Use DHCP

Modify /etc/nixos/configuration.nix, ensure the NIC is using DHCP, and then run nixos-rebuild switch should get a static internal IP now.

networking.interfaces.<your NIC>.useDHCP = true;

3. Enable SSH

The following code enable SSH for NixOS.

users.users.<user name> = {
  # ...
  openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [
    "<your local public key>"
  ];
}

services.openssh.enable = true;

An example about local public key is id_rsa.pub, then put the following config into ~/.ssh/config in your local machine.

Host <IP>
  HostName <IP>
  User <username>
  Port <ssh port>

4. Final

Now everything is ready, I can ssh to my NixOS desktop. Then I upgrade my NixOS to 21.11 remotely, it's fun!