A developer added machinectl integration and SSH-over-VSOCK support to microvm.nix, enabling NixOS VMs to appear natively in systemd's machine management tooling. The implementation leverages systemd 259's new RegisterMachineEx() API to register rich VM metadata (VSockCID, SSHAddress, NetworkInterfaces, etc.) while falling back to older APIs on earlier hosts. A new guest option enables sshd over VSOCK, and a microvm -s helper handles host-side SSH connections. The work also includes regression tests for machined registration, argument splitting, and edge cases in the imperative service template. The PR was submitted upstream as microvm.nix PR #453.
Table of contents
What I wanted from the hostWhat microvm.nix neededWhy systemd 259 matteredWhat gets registeredSSH needed some cleanup tooThe edge casesTestsThanksResultSort: