Steam Deck as infrastructure control plane

humblehomelab

Steam Deck story #

I recently returned from a pleasant trip to Canada. My cousin gave me his Steam Deck since he was seeking for the newest model, and I was looking for a Linux workstation to run as initial control plane for my humble/homelab project.

Enable SSH #

From the Steam Deck menu, switch from to the Steam Desktop. Then open up the Konsole terminal.
The terminal should look like this:

(deck@steamdeck ~) $

deck is the default username. By default, there is no password set for the account so you could simply run:

passwd

But my cousin set it before and luckily he still remembers the password.
Then we can enable the SSHD with sudo:

sudo systemctl start sshd

To make the SSHD after every restart, enable it:

sudo systemctl enable sshd

Install Nix #

Using nix-shell to install and run all the tools/packages I need for my homelab.
I followed the pretty good guide here.
Technically, if you don't mind breaking things, then their script is quite solid:

curl -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install steam-deck

I took the 4-steps dance:
Create /etc/systemd/system/nix-directory.service

[Unit]
Description=Create a `/nix` directory to be used for bind mounting
PropagatesStopTo=nix-daemon.service
PropagatesStopTo=nix.mount
DefaultDependencies=no
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=steamos-readonly disable
ExecStart=mkdir -vp /nix
ExecStart=chmod -v 0755 /nix
ExecStart=chown -v root /nix
ExecStart=chgrp -v root /nix
ExecStart=steamos-readonly enable
ExecStop=steamos-readonly disable
ExecStop=rmdir /nix
ExecStop=steamos-readonly enable
RemainAfterExit=true

Then create /etc/systemd/system/nix.mount

[Unit]
Description=Mount `/home/nix` on `/nix`
PropagatesStopTo=nix-daemon.service
PropagatesStopTo=nix-directory.service
After=nix-directory.service
Requires=nix-directory.service
ConditionPathIsDirectory=/nix
DefaultDependencies=no
RequiredBy=nix-daemon.service
RequiredBy=nix-daemon.socket
[Mount]
What=/home/nix
Where=/nix
Type=none
DirectoryMode=0755
Options=bind

and create /etc/systemd/system/ensure-symlinked-units-resolve.service

[Unit]
Description=Ensure Nix related units which are symlinked resolve
After=nix.mount
Requires=nix-directory.service
Requires=nix.mount
DefaultDependencies=no
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemctl daemon-reload
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemctl restart --no-block nix-daemon.socket
[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target

Then enable the ensure-symlinked-units-resolve service and it will start the chain of settings:

sudo systemctl enable --now ensure-symlinked-units-resolve.service

And run the installation script normally:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

Install Arch Linux packages #

I need docker to spin up the PXE servers. The setup is straight-forward following this guide here.
Since we disabled the steamos-readonly after the Nix installation, I skipped this step:

sudo steamos-readonly disable

Initialize pacman's keyring:

sudo pacman-key --init

Populate pacman's keyring with the default Arch Linux keys:

sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux

And then I simply install docker with pacman. Also noticed that some packages will be uninstalled/reverted when doing the upgrade via the Steam Deck setting menu, I guess it's normal as we were messing up the internal packages.

Some tweakings #

While starting PXE boot over IPv4, I got the process hanged and the PXE servers weren't reachable for the servers.
They were blocked by the firewalld. So added a few more ports for HTTP and DHCP servers:

sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=80/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=67/udp

Result #

I'm able to spin up the full homelab with a single command from the Steam Deck. Pretty cool and also pretty weird way of using the Steam Deck.