new post about nixos sshfs automount a hetzner storage box

content/2024-08-10-hetzner-storagebox-nixos-sshfs-fstab.md

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+title = "Automount a Hetzner Storage Box with sshfs on NixOS"
+date = 2024-08-10
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+
+I had my eyes on some nice arm64 servers from Hetzner, and I finally pulled the trigger, I got the `CAX21`.
+
+It is also the opportunity to reduce time of maintaining my infrastructure, I will use NixOS to setup my server.
+By having a couple of configuration files, it will be easier to review, edit and update the system.
+
+But time will tell if it is the good decision, and not sticking to a imperative distribution such as Debian.
+
+# Not a lot of storage
+
+The only downside with these servers is the storage -- I only have 80 gigabytes of storage on mine.
+Fortunately, Hetzner has their **Storage Box** offerings, I picked up a `BX11` which has 1 terabyte of storage!
+
+The plan is to mount the storage box as a regular drive and have applications use it normally.
+The main applications will be documents, media, backups -- not speed critical data such as databases or logs.
+
+# Storage Box ordering and setup
+
+Start by ordering your Storage Box, I think mine took less than an hour to be provisioned and delivered to me.
+
+On the configuration panel, I only ticked `SSH support` and the disabled the rest.
+If you will use the storage box outside of the Hetzner network, enable `External reachability`.
+
+Finally, you cannot set the password yourself, you will have to reset it.
+
+# SSH keys
+
+On the server, generate a new ssh key with `ssh-keygen` which will be used to connect to the storage box.
+
+Since I want the storage box to be mounted automatically on startup, so I did not set a passphrase on the key.
+
+Copy the ssh to the storage box with:
+```shell
+ssh-copy-id -p 23 -s [email protected]
+```
+
+More documentation on ssh keys with storage box: <https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/storage-box/backup-space-ssh-keys>
+
+# NixOS configuration
+
+The easy part, and the reason why I think I will like to use NixOS on my server:
+
+You can put it inside your `configuration.nix` directly, I placed it inside its own file.
+
+```nix
+{ ... }:
+
+{
+  fileSystems."/mnt/storagebox" = {
+    device = "[email protected]:/some/path";
+    fsType = "fuse.sshfs";
+    options = [
+      "identityfile=/place/to/ssh/key/somewhere"
+      "idmap=user"
+      "x-systemd.automount" # mount the filesystem automatically on first access
+      "allow_other" # don't restrict access to only the user which `mount`s it (because that's probably systemd who mounts it, not you)
+      "user" # allow manual `mount`ing, as ordinary user.
+      "_netdev"
+    ];
+  };
+  boot.supportedFilesystems."fuse.sshfs" = true;
+}
+```
+
+Thank you so much to [this Discourse post](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-auto-mount-with-sshfs-as-a-normal-user/48276/3?u=philt3r) for the configuration snippet!
+
+Run
+```shell
+nixos-rebuild switch && cd /mnt/storagebox
+```
+and you are able to read and write files!