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Project N.O.M.A.D. — Installation

Primary audience: TAPPaaS admin.

Prerequisites

  • The foundation installed.
  • Disk for the libraries you want (see Choosing content below); the default 128 GB holds a local-language and the English Wikipedia.

Security risk: the Command Center has no sign-in

Read this before you install NOMAD.

  • Whoever reaches the Command Center controls the NOMAD VM. It has no sign-in, and it runs its apps through Docker's socket. So anyone who can open port 8080 can start any container with any mount. In effect, that is root on the VM.
  • Who can reach it:
  • every device on the home network, through the module's ingress rule;
  • the other machines in the dmz zone (coturn, lazysite and vaultwarden, when installed). The site firewall does not filter between machines in the same zone, and the ports Docker publishes bypass the VM's own firewall.
  • What a takeover reaches: the internet, and the other machines in the dmz. It does not reach the site's other zones. NOMAD keeps no user data.

So install NOMAD only on a site where you trust every device on the home network. Pause it when nobody is using it:

module-manager module suspend nomad     # the VM stops and stays stopped
module-manager module resume nomad

Install

module-manager module add nomad

This creates the VM, applies its NixOS configuration (Docker and NOMAD's stack) and lets the home network reach it. The first start pulls the container images, which takes a few minutes.

Post-install

  1. Open http://nomad.<zone>.internal:8080 from the home network.
  2. In the Command Center, run its Easy Setup, or install apps and content under Settings.
  3. The apps open at http://nomad.<zone>.internal:<port>, from the Command Center's tiles.

Choosing content

The Information Library is Kiwix: it serves ZIM files from the Kiwix catalogue, which has Wikipedia in every language it is written in, not only English — pick the language in the Command Center's library browser. Sizes vary a lot; nopic and mini editions are a fraction of the full ones.

Selection What About
Minimal Wikipedia in the site's language (nopic), Notes 1–10 GB
Full Wikipedia in the site's language and in English (with pictures), Wiktionary, a course collection in the Education Platform, the Supply Depot tools you use 150 GB and more

Grow the disk before a large download:

module-manager module modify nomad --set diskSize=256G

Leave out the AI Assistant: the site's AI stack (Open WebUI) is the one to use.

Verification

module-manager module test nomad
Check Expected
docker, project-nomad.service active
containers nomad_admin, nomad_mysql, nomad_redis, nomad_disk_collector running
http://localhost:8080/api/health on the VM 200
images pinned tags, none :latest
http://nomad.<zone>.internal:8080 answers
NOMAD's URL http://nomad.<zone>.internal:8080, so its apps open at that name

Troubleshooting

The stack does not start. journalctl -u project-nomad on the VM shows the compose output; sudo docker ps -a which container stopped.

An app does not open. From outside the home network it is not reachable, by design. From inside it, check that the app's port is in the module's ingress rules (nomad.json): a port outside them is blocked by the site firewall.