feat(hosts): add the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Psion sidecar
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A headless aarch64 companion for a Psion 5MX: PPP over RS232 with NAT out to
wifi and a telnet login, plus a cleartext POP3/SMTP proxy for the Psion's mail
client.

- hosts/PiZero2W/: host config, serial-ppp.nix, email-proxy.nix, an SD-image
  variant, and a hardware-configuration.nix placeholder.
- Host table entry on nixos-hardware's raspberry-pi-3 profile; the Zero 2 W is
  the Pi 3's BCM2837 SoC. nixpkgs' linuxPackages_rpi02w is deprecated and warns
  that the linux-rpi series is being removed in favour of nixos-hardware.
- The host owns its firmware partition (hardware.raspberry-pi.firmware), which
  is what puts the disable-bt and uart0/ctsrts overlays in config.txt so
  /dev/ttyAMA0 is the RS232 header rather than Bluetooth. uboot.enable keeps the
  U-Boot -> extlinux boot path the rewritten config.txt would otherwise lose.
- packages.aarch64-linux.zero2w-sd-image: the host's own configuration as an
  installable card. The board has no Ethernet and no free serial port, so a
  generic image would leave no way in.
- The mail proxy comes from the legacy-email-proxy flake, which provides the
  package and the NixOS module; nothing about it is vendored here.
- docs/hosts/pizero2w.md, plus README host table and shared-layer notes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Emma Thorpe
2026-08-21 13:20:04 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 1ff333a896
commit fd97b694ad
9 changed files with 590 additions and 22 deletions
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# Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (aarch64) "Psion sidecar": an RS232 companion for a
# Psion 5MX. Two roles, split into submodules: ./serial-ppp.nix (PPP over the
# serial line, NAT out to wifi, telnet login) and ./email-proxy.nix (cleartext
# POP3/SMTP front end for the Psion's mail client). The raspberry-pi-3
# nixos-hardware profile (the Zero 2 W is the same BCM2837 SoC as the Pi 3) and
# key-only sshd (../../modules/ssh.nix) are layered on in the flake host table.
# Install notes: see ../../docs/hosts/pizero2w.md.
{ lib, ... }:
{
imports = [
./hardware-configuration.nix
./serial-ppp.nix
./email-proxy.nix
];
# Match the flake's nixosConfigurations attribute name so `nh os switch`
# (which selects by the local hostname) resolves without an explicit -H flag.
networking.hostName = "lyrathorpe-zero2w";
# Headless server: modules/sway.nix is not imported and
# features.swayDesktop.enable defaults to false, so this host keeps plain
# TTY/SSH login.
# Claude Code is a Node application. It runs on aarch64, but not usefully in
# 512 MB of RAM, and its closure is unwelcome on an SD card.
features.claudeCode.enable = false;
# 512 MB total and no swap partition -- SD cards wear out under swap writes.
# Compressed RAM swap instead; zstd is the best ratio-per-cycle the SoC can
# sustain.
zramSwap = {
enable = true;
algorithm = "zstd";
};
# The NixOS manual and man page index cost build time and a chunk of the card
# for a box that is administered over SSH from elsewhere.
documentation.nixos.enable = false;
# Own the firmware partition declaratively: every switch rewrites config.txt,
# the vendor device trees and the overlays below. Without this the card keeps
# whatever config.txt the flashed image wrote and the UART overlays never
# load. uboot.enable keeps the GPU firmware chainloading U-Boot -> extlinux,
# which is how the NixOS aarch64 SD image boots; leaving it off would rewrite
# config.txt without a `kernel=` line and the board would stop booting.
hardware.raspberry-pi.firmware = {
enable = true;
uboot.enable = true;
};
hardware.raspberry-pi.configtxt = {
settings.all = {
# Headless: hand the VideoCore the minimum and leave the rest to Linux.
# start_x/camera_auto_detect otherwise reserve VRAM for a camera stack
# this board does not have.
gpu_mem = 16;
start_x = 0;
camera_auto_detect = false;
# Left on, the firmware auto-loads the KMS display overlay, which wants
# more VRAM than this board can spare for a monitor it will never have.
display_auto_detect = false;
};
# Replaces the profile's default (vc4-kms-v3d), which is display hardware
# this host never uses.
deviceTreeOverlays.all = [
# Move the PL011 UART off Bluetooth and onto GPIO 14/15, so /dev/ttyAMA0
# is the RS232 header. The mini UART (ttyS0) derives its baud rate from
# the core clock and drifts at 115200.
{ disable-bt = { }; }
# RTS/CTS on GPIO 16/17: the Psion's modem profile uses hardware flow
# control, and so does pppd in ./serial-ppp.nix.
{ uart0.ctsrts = true; }
];
};
# Wifi is the Pi's uplink and the route the Psion reaches the internet over
# (./serial-ppp.nix masquerades onto it).
networking.interfaces.wlan0.useDHCP = true;
networking.wireless = {
enable = true;
interfaces = [ "wlan0" ];
# PSKs stay out of the Nix store: wpa_supplicant reads them at runtime from
# this file, which is created on the device (root-owned, 0600) and contains
# psk_home=<the pre-shared key>
# See ../../docs/hosts/pizero2w.md.
secretsFile = "/var/lib/wpa_supplicant/secrets.conf";
networks."CHANGE-ME-SSID".pskRaw = "ext:psk_home";
};
# The board takes a DHCP lease over wifi, so its address moves. mDNS makes it
# findable as lyrathorpe-zero2w.local instead of hunting through the router's
# lease table -- which matters most on first boot, when it is the only way in.
services.avahi = {
enable = true;
openFirewall = true;
publish = {
enable = true;
addresses = true;
workstation = true;
};
};
# Default-deny inbound. sshd opens 22 (../../modules/ssh.nix); everything the
# Psion talks to is reached over the PPP link, which ./serial-ppp.nix marks
# trusted.
networking.firewall.enable = true;
# See `man configuration.nix` / the stateVersion docs before changing.
system.stateVersion = "26.05";
}