[Nix-dev] Affordable Nixos server?

[Marc Weber]

Do you have any recommendations where I could try installing nixos ?

I've tried
a) vc-server, results:
  That time it took me a week. But I had to add some patches to make nixos
  run at all. I havn't had time to maintain the patch set so I keep this
  system running and hope nothing happens .. (I'm running my irc client
  on that..)
  I don't like this provider because remving /bin/cp made you loos all
  your data because it's stored encrypted and their "rescue" mode could
  no longer mount it for some reasons.. The FTP backup system was slow.
  They worked on an alternative though.
  I think they're using virtuozzo or such.
  You don't get notified if they update their system.

b) netcup.de: Cheap and nice system. Resuce system works fine.
  However their virtualization software doesn't provide the correct pid
  when a process dies . This is very important for httpd and such. After
  figuring out I was able to start processes once using upstart. However I
  can't restart one.

c) XEN (xencon). I tried setting it up. I failed. I don't remember why.
  Probably I should install XEN locally and retry it there to know
  what's happenning.

d) OVH: It seemed to be the best choice because it doesn't use any
  virtualization software at all. You can even install by live cd using
  vkvm. However the vkvm system doesn't have networking support.
  Nixos boots fine until upstart is started. Then I don't know what's
  happening. It seems to reboot. I've no clue what's happening when
  starting from harddisk. I tried using   exec &> /tmp/log in both boot
  stages.sh files. I never got those logs.

  Nice about OVH: you can reboot and put the system into "rescue" mode
  by SOAP API which works fine. You have to wait some minutes until the
  new password is sent by mail though. So I'm not sure whether kind of
  "PAE missing" appears on the non exisitng screen at bootup or what
  else fails.

  Maybe I should retry using the default debian kernel instead of the
  nixos one because I know that that boots?


Anyway if you have any further suggestions how to get a running nixos
system up and running for < 45 EUR per month with reasonable RAM let me
know. Probably I neither have tried hard enough nor spend enough time to
make it work yet.

What would you try first?

Marc Weber