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+# Serving a Nix store via SSH
+
+You can tell Nix to automatically fetch needed binaries from a remote
+Nix store via SSH. For example, the following installs Firefox,
+automatically fetching any store paths in Firefox’s closure if they are
+available on the server `avalon`:
+
+```console
+$ nix-env -i firefox --substituters ssh://alice@avalon
+```
+
+This works similar to the binary cache substituter that Nix usually
+uses, only using SSH instead of HTTP: if a store path `P` is needed, Nix
+will first check if it’s available in the Nix store on `avalon`. If not,
+it will fall back to using the binary cache substituter, and then to
+building from source.
+
+> **Note**
+> 
+> The SSH substituter currently does not allow you to enter an SSH
+> passphrase interactively. Therefore, you should use `ssh-add` to load
+> the decrypted private key into `ssh-agent`.
+
+You can also copy the closure of some store path, without installing it
+into your profile, e.g.
+
+```console
+$ nix-store -r /nix/store/m85bxg…-firefox-34.0.5 --substituters
+ssh://alice@avalon
+```
+
+This is essentially equivalent to doing
+
+```console
+$ nix-copy-closure --from alice@avalon
+/nix/store/m85bxg…-firefox-34.0.5
+```
+
+You can use SSH’s *forced command* feature to set up a restricted user
+account for SSH substituter access, allowing read-only access to the
+local Nix store, but nothing more. For example, add the following lines
+to `sshd_config` to restrict the user `nix-ssh`:
+
+    Match User nix-ssh
+      AllowAgentForwarding no
+      AllowTcpForwarding no
+      PermitTTY no
+      PermitTunnel no
+      X11Forwarding no
+      ForceCommand nix-store --serve
+    Match All
+
+On NixOS, you can accomplish the same by adding the following to your
+`configuration.nix`:
+
+```nix
+nix.sshServe.enable = true;
+nix.sshServe.keys = [ "ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1k... bob@example.org" ];
+```
+
+where the latter line lists the public keys of users that are allowed to
+connect.