nixfiles/docs/sites/home/sfh/README.md

sfh

"Shill from home" — the NixOS container host for the home site. A VM on palace that netboots from river and runs its root off NVMe-oF from cellar.

• Source: nixos/boxes/home/palace/vms/sfh/ (default.nix, containers/)
• Host: VM on palace
• nixpkgs: mine

Role

• Runs the home NixOS containers via my.containers.instances (systemd-nspawn); each container is its own nixos.systems.* entry rendered through my.asContainer.
• Netboot client (my.netboot.client.enable): the VM has no boot disk — its netboot NIC on palace's lan-lo bridge is matched by a kea client-class on river and iPXE-boots from boot.h.nul.ie.
• Root on NVMe-oF: my.nvme.boot connects to nqn.2016-06.io.spdk:sfh (cellar, RDMA) from the initrd (lan-hi up + roceBootModules); /nix and /persist are LVs on that volume. KeepConfiguration=static on lan-hi protects the NVMe-oF address from networkd reconfigures.
• Frigate footage disk: palace passes the hdds/frigate LVM LV through as a virtio disk; sfh mounts it at /mnt/frigate (by label) and bind-mounts it into the hass container at /var/lib/frigate.
• USB: two host ports are passed to the VM (qemu flags) for the Zigbee coordinator and webcam used by hass; the nspawn unit gets DeviceAllow for char-ttyUSB and char-video4linux.

Network assignments

See the consolidated network assignments table (this box: sfh).

Networking

Four NICs, all MTU 9000 where jumbo-capable:

• lan-hi — SR-IOV VF 2, the box's own hi assignment.
• lan-hi-ctrs — SR-IOV VF 3, no L3: the MACVLAN parent for the containers' hi interfaces (host0 inside each container).
• lan-core-ctrs / lan-lo-ctrs — virtio NICs (bridged to palace's lan-core / lan-lo), no L3: MACVLAN parents for containers that need a core or lo interface.

The per-container MACVLAN wiring lives in systemd.nspawn.*.networkConfig in sfh/default.nix.

Containers

Container	Role
hass	Home Assistant + Frigate + MQTT
unifi	UniFi controller

Notable config files

• nixos/boxes/home/palace/vms/sfh/default.nix — box config: netboot/NVMe-oF boot, container instances, MACVLAN plumbing, Frigate disk.
• nixos/boxes/home/palace/vms/sfh/containers/ — the container system definitions.
• nixos/boxes/home/palace/vms/default.nix — the VM definition on palace (VFs, USB passthrough, netboot NIC, hdds/frigate disk).