pi-gen VS Ansible

Not to mention that if you really want to tinker you can use pi-gen to customise builds from a desktop without all that much difficulty:

https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen

Worth a play.

If you want a comprehensive answer then you can look at https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen and see what packages are installed in stage4 and stage5.

You can use the tool that the Pi foundation uses to generate their images: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen

Re: a preconfigured SD with RaspAP, this is possible with pi-gen, the tool used to create the official RPi OS images, but the build process can be a bit involved.

pi@raspmountain:~/webcam $ which startx /usr/bin/startx pi@raspmountain:~/webcam $ cat /boot/issue.txt Raspberry Pi reference 2021-01-11 Generated using pi-gen, https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen, 21090519d85bdaa1615d5d5057d37b09368ea5d2, stage4

I've been using pi-gen to build images. Does buildroot have any advantages over that?

The OS images are generated using pi-gen. https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen/blob/master/stage5/00-install-extras/00-packages + Libreoffice is the list of additional packages in the recommended software image.All the other packages get pulled in as a dependency.

You can always create your own raspbian image using Pi-Gen. I’ve been looking into doing it for a couple projects already.

I use some Pis for various things in my house including Zeroes through CM4s and 4Bs.

The Zeroes run Raspbian configured with the read-only filesystem option. I have found it necessary to uninstall `unattended-upgrades` because the overlayfs employed for read-only root caches disk writes in RAM and the update/upgrade process exhausts RAM. For the same reason I disable swap. It makes no sense to swap to RAM on a 512GB system.

Upgrades are tedious since they require disabling overlayfs, rebooting, upgrading, rebooting, and enabling overlayfs. I wrote Ansible playbooks to perform these tasks. (https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/tree/main/Pi)

I have a Pi 4B performing as a file server and running Debian (not Raspbian) It boots from an SD card so that the entire HDDs can be used for a ZFS pool. To reduce wear and tear on the SD card I have mounted `/var` to a ZFS filesystem. I should probably use `tmpfs` for `/tmp`.

I use a Pi CM4 to run HomeAssistant and that boots and runs from an NVME SSD where durability is less an issue.

Nice. I've written some playbooks for my herd of Pis as well. (https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/tree/main/Pi) I dropped by mainly to say "well done!"

I use Ansible for a lot of repetitive tasks on R-Pi OS - mostly for a bunch of zeroes. https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/tree/main/Pi I haven't bothered automating stuff on Debian but it could be done.

I've been using Ansible to configure Pis instead of the imager just because I've done it manually in the past and just automated that process. https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/blob/main/Pi/provision-local.yml

I've started employing the readonly configuration available in raspi-config for systems that don't require writable storage. I've written some Ansible playbooks to make that a little more convenient. https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/tree/main/Pi On Pi 3/4 I usually use an SSD but I have a few zeroes that are more or less IoT devices and run from SD cards.

Yes, thanks - I meant to. https://github.com/HankB/Ansible/blob/0c4a1bce42f84acc4176624fed671ee460c683a6/Pi/provision-local.yml

At one point (well before I finished the series) I decided to start doing rather than continue learning. My results have been very satisfying. (https://github.com/HankB/Ansible *) When I want to perform some task that I'm not familiar with, I check the online manual and/or search for examples. In that way my learning is more self directed. I do plan to get back to watching the series at some point but in the mean time my learning is more goal/self directed. I'm over the hump and at the point where Ansible is a useful tool. (I did not have any experience with other automation tools such as Chef or Puppet and my prior experience is as a S/W developer and not an administrator.)