acm-aws contains the Terraform deployment files for acmCSUF. It uses Terraform and Nix to orchestrate cloud servers.

Terraform is a tool that allows us to declare infrastructure as code (IaC). In other words, it allows us to declare what we want cloud providers (e.g. AWS) to do for us in code without having to touch buttons.

The entire process of orchestrating cloud servers is automated using this tool, and any changes are done on these version-controlled text files, not any UI.

Nix (used here) is a declarative package manager. Unlike any traditional package manager, Nix is used as a programming language capable of reproducing package builds in a sane manner with everything written in files.

Similarly to Terraform, Nix's input files will help us manage the servers in a more automatic fashion by allowing us to declare what we want on the servers and have everything else handled automatically.

acm-aws has several root directories:

• nix/ contains internal Nix files, such as the sources for some of our packages.
• packages/ contains our own Nix package files.
• scripts/ contains utility scripts. See the "Quick Tasks" section.
• secrets/ contains deployment secrets such as tokens. This should never be pushed decrypted.
• servers/ contains all the files that define servers.
  • servers/base.nix is the base Nix server declaration.
  • servers/cirno/* contains the files for just the cirno server.
• main.tf declares the root Terraform module. Applying this file will deploy all of our servers.

You need Terraform, Nix and git-crypt to develop and deploy. It's most recommended if you have nix-shell.

For instructions on how to install Nix, see Nix > Download. It should just be one command.

To set up git-crypt, run:

git-crypt init

Afterwards, initialize the local Terraform workspace:

terraform init

Run:

terraform apply

The sections underneath describe small tasks that may be useful in certain scenarios.

# Example: ./scripts/ssh <server name>

./scripts/ssh cirno

# Example: ./scripts/ip <server name>

ip=$(./scripts/ip cirno)
curl -v ${ip}:80

# Example: ./scripts/update-pkg <package name>

./scripts/update-pkg acmregister