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In depth

The rest of this handbook is for the owner of a box. This chapter is for the people who build LosOS, run an edge or cut a release: how the pieces fit together, why each one sits where it does, and how to change them.

LosOS is a NixOS appliance for a mini-PC. It runs Nextcloud for your own files and can lend spare disk and CPU to a mesh of other LosOS boxes. There is no SSH and no login shell. You administer it from a web page, and it upgrades itself.

The root filesystem is a tmpfs that is rebuilt on every boot. Only the directories listed in modules/impermanence.nix survive, on an encrypted /persist partition.

Pages​

  • Install in depth. The installer ISO, Secure Boot, TPM, the demo image, growing the disk.
  • Administration. The admin UI, settings, upgrades and the nightly reboot.
  • Mesh. Contributing storage and compute to other boxes.
  • Market. Selling the disk and CPU a box already shares (planned).
  • Virtual machines. Renting machines on the mesh and hosting other boxes' machines.
  • Widget builder. An AI agent writes a widget from a description, paid from a prepaid balance.
  • Master proxy. Reaching the box from the internet without opening a port.
  • Edge federation. Your own edge on the LAN, relayed through the official ones.
  • Lab. The setup visualiser at /lab/, its simulated and real guests.
  • Hardening. The default hardening baseline and the opt-in flags.
  • TPM and the disk key. What the chip does, and what a box without one gives up.
  • Security model. What is and is not defended.
  • Architecture. How the pieces fit together.

Compared with alternatives​

  • A NAS (Synology, QNAP). Same idea, a box with a web UI. The difference is that the root here is discarded on every boot, so an attacker's changes last until the next reboot, which comes at 00:07 each night at the latest. You can also read and rebuild everything the box runs.
  • A VPS. The box is in your home and its disk is encrypted. The key is sealed to the box's TPM chip, or kept on the boot partition on a machine without one. The optional master proxy gives it a public address without an inbound port.
  • Plain NixOS. You could write all of this yourself. Here it is already written, and the user isolation, encrypted persistence, disk growth, hardening and mesh gating each have a VM test.
  • Other self-hosting stacks. None of them lend capacity to a mesh only while the owner's time window is open and the box is idle.

What it is not​

  • Not a general-purpose server. There is no shell by design.
  • Not a backup. Keep copies of /persist somewhere else.
  • Not finished.