bytemarkhosting / pi-init2

Set up a Raspberry Pi and manage any of its configuration just from the /boot partition

pi-init2

Purpose

A program which lets you set up a Raspberry Pi solely by writing to the /boot partition (i.e. the one you can write from most computers!)

This allows you to distribute a small .zip file to set up a Raspberry Pi to do anything. You tell the user to unzip it over the top of the Pi's boot partition - the system can set itself up perfectly on the first boot.

Additionally, once a Raspberry Pi has been set up using pi-init2, various sytem files are symlinked back to the /boot, allowing you to reliably edit those "user-serviceable" files from the computer in future. So e.g. the list of wireless networks and passwords, or other files specific to the kind of appliance you're building.

I keep a small example appliance in this repository which sets the Pi up as a web "kiosk", showing a full screen web browser after it boots up. It hopefully shows some of the more fiddly stuff.

Trying it out

From your desktop / laptop:

• Download and write a standard Raspbian "jessie" SD card
• Unzip the latest release into the /boot partition
• Remove the SD card and put it into your Pi.

The Raspberry Pi should now boot into a full screen web browser. The first boot takes 2-5 minutes depending on your network, and which model of Raspberry Pi you use (I tested with models B+ and 2).

You can edit either of these files:

• appliance/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf - for wireless network credentials, if you're using a wireless adapter.
• appliance/home/pi/graphical_startup.sh - to change the URL to load on startup.

Building pi-init2

I've included a script called 'build-and-copy' which I use from an Ubuntu system to build the pi-init2 program, copy all the appliance files into place, and unmount the card. Any contributions appreciated.

pi-init2's Issues

Why isn't this a shell script?

Apologies, this is your repo, you may do as you wish, but have you considered not writing shell commands into go? It seems like it would make a really simple shell-script without the need for a dependency on go or a build-step, and could help people to understand the main work is in overriding the init portion of the cmdline.txt to run a custom script. Also the custom script would be a lot more readable in shell.