Raspberry PI Image Generation

This project generates and customizes a Raspberry Pi image, either for Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS. The script is built for running within a docker container.

The customizations include:

• Generating or adding a vaultkey.secret file
• Updating Ansible configuration in /boot/firmware/riasc.yaml
• Updating cloud-init file in /boot/firmware/user-data
• Setting GIT Ansible repor in /boot/firmware/riasc.yaml
• Adding and enabling GIT based Ansible updates on reboot

Usage

1. Switch to directory with Dockerfile to build image

docker build --tag "imagebuilder" .

2. Create env file:

GIT_URL=https://mygiturl
FLAVOR=ubuntu22.04
GIT_BRANCH=mybranch
NODENAME=myhost
TAG=test

3. Run docker container to generate image

docker run \
--volume ./:/tmp/riasc \
--volume ./out/:/tmp/data \
--env-file ./env \
imagebuilder

4. Image is placed in ´out/output´ folder
5. Copy image to SD card. Either using dd or the Raspberry Pi Imager

List of Available Variables

Variable	Info	Default	OS
FLAVOR	Flavor of os. See list of flavors	-	All
NODENAME	The hostname of the device	-	All
TAG	A tag that is added to the name	-	All
RAW_OUTPOUT	Set to yes to get the .img file as output	-	All
VAULT_KEY	Key to use in the vaultkey.secret file	-	All
API_HOST	Hostname of API server	-	All
DEVICE_ID	UUID of this device	-	All
USERNAME	Set user for device	ubuntu	Ubuntu
PASSWORD	Set the password for the device	ubuntu	Ubuntu
FORCE_PW_CHANGE	Force use to change password on first login	true	Ubuntu

List of Flavors

ubuntu24.04

ubuntu22.04

ubuntu20.04

raspios

Help

How to mount the generated image to check the content?

Check for the partitions in the image file:

fdisk -lu ubuntu-22.04.4-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img

Run mount command. Make sure to update the offset (526336) for the correct value

mount ubuntu-22.04.4-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img -o loop,offset=$(( 512 * 526336)) /mnt/

How to add my custom secrets file for ansible vaults?

To use a custom secret the VAULT_KEY variable can be set. If a vaultkey file of the name NODENAME-vaultkey.secret already exists the variable will be ignored.

Credits

• Steffen Vogel 📧, Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH Aachen University
• Vincent Bareiß 📧, Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH Aachen University
• Manuel Pitz 📧, Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH Aachen University

Funding acknowledgment

The development of RIasC has been supported by the ERIGrid 2.0 project
of the H2020 Programme under Grant Agreement No. 870620