diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 100e24f21..cbc50650e 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ $ foreman start
 Have a look at the [Procfile](./Procfile) if you want to see how the processes are being started. In order to avoid
 conflicts with services that might be running on your host, hydra and postgress are started on custom ports:
 
-- hydra-server: 63333
+- hydra-server: 63333 with the username "alice" and the password "foobar"
 - postgresql: 64444
 
 Note that this is only ever meant as an ad-hoc way of executing Hydra during development. Please make use of the
diff --git a/foreman/start-evaluator.sh b/foreman/start-evaluator.sh
index 249c40471..a2858003b 100755
--- a/foreman/start-evaluator.sh
+++ b/foreman/start-evaluator.sh
@@ -3,5 +3,4 @@
 # wait for hydra-server to listen
 while ! nc -z localhost 63333; do sleep 1; done
 
-touch .hydra-data/hydra.conf
 HYDRA_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.hydra-data/hydra.conf exec hydra-evaluator
diff --git a/foreman/start-hydra.sh b/foreman/start-hydra.sh
index 79b4fdb83..66773f811 100755
--- a/foreman/start-hydra.sh
+++ b/foreman/start-hydra.sh
@@ -8,5 +8,11 @@ createdb -h $(pwd)/.hydra-data/postgres -p 64444 hydra
 hydra-init
 hydra-create-user alice --password foobar --role admin
 
-touch .hydra-data/hydra.conf
+if [ ! -f ./.hydra-data/hydra.conf ]; then
+    echo "Creating a default hydra.conf"
+    cat << EOF > .hydra-data/hydra.conf
+# test-time instances likely don't want to bootstrap nixpkgs from scratch
+use-substitutes = true
+EOF
+fi
 HYDRA_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.hydra-data/hydra.conf exec hydra-dev-server --port 63333
diff --git a/foreman/start-notify.sh b/foreman/start-notify.sh
index f63997aeb..6a647e545 100755
--- a/foreman/start-notify.sh
+++ b/foreman/start-notify.sh
@@ -3,5 +3,4 @@
 # wait for hydra-server to listen
 while ! nc -z localhost 63333; do sleep 1; done
 
-touch .hydra-data/hydra.conf
 HYDRA_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.hydra-data/hydra.conf exec hydra-notify
diff --git a/foreman/start-queue-runner.sh b/foreman/start-queue-runner.sh
index 7c92f4e91..f4fd60488 100755
--- a/foreman/start-queue-runner.sh
+++ b/foreman/start-queue-runner.sh
@@ -3,5 +3,4 @@
 # wait until hydra is listening on port 63333
 while ! nc -z localhost 63333; do sleep 1; done
 
-touch .hydra-data/hydra.conf
-HYDRA_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.hydra-data/hydra.conf exec hydra-queue-runner
+NIX_REMOTE_SYSTEMS="" HYDRA_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.hydra-data/hydra.conf exec hydra-queue-runner
diff --git a/src/script/hydra-notify b/src/script/hydra-notify
index 1b4ddf087..6677667cd 100755
--- a/src/script/hydra-notify
+++ b/src/script/hydra-notify
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ use Hydra::Helper::AddBuilds;
 use IO::Select;
 
 STDERR->autoflush(1);
+STDOUT->autoflush(1);
 binmode STDERR, ":encoding(utf8)";
 
 my $config = getHydraConfig();