Raspberry Pi Ansible Role

Installing Ansible tutorial (franch)

Installing Ansible tutorial (French)

Installing the Raspberry Pi Role

You can install the role in your project in two ways:

1. With ansible-galaxy:

ansible-galaxy install -p roles themaire.raspberry_pi_configurator

2. With git clone:

git clone https://github.com/themaire/ansible-role-raspberry_pi_configurator.git roles/raspberry_pi_configurator

Both methods will make the role available as raspberry_pi_configurator in your playbooks.

1 — Flash the SD Card with Raspberry Pi Imager

Before flashing, set a custom password for the Pi, configure Wi-Fi (if needed), and enable SSH.

2 — Create an SSH Key

On the computer where you will use Ansible, create an SSH key for your future Raspberry Pi user (e.g. nico, change as needed):

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/nico.key

Important: Replace the file ./roles/raspberry_pi/files/nico.key.pub with your own public key, named after your future username (e.g. nico.key.pub). After running the playbook, you will be able to connect via SSH without a password.

3 — Set Passwords in the Vault File

The vault file is stored in the group_vars/new folder (vault.yml). It only affects the new node group.

Vault usage:

ansible-vault rekey ./group_vars/new/vault.yml
3 Edit the vault file
ansible-vault edit ./group_vars/new/vault.yml

It is recommended to declare one admin user first, and no regular users.

4 — Adapt the Inventory File

Edit the inventory.yml file. Several boards are present as examples.

5 — Run the Playbook

1. Connect to your fresh Raspberry Pi OS via SSH and disconnect immediately.
2. (Best option) View or run the file demo_role_raspberrypi.sh.
3. Enjoy!

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Project Structure

raspbian_configurator/
├── inventory.yml
├── play_configrasp.yml
├── roles/
│   └── raspberry_pi_configurator/
│       ├── defaults/
│       │   └── main.yml
│       ├── files/
│       ├── handlers/
│       ├── meta/
│       ├── tasks/
│       ├── templates/
│       └── tests/
├── group_vars/
│   └── new/
│       ├── new.yml
│       └── vault.yml
└── README.md

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Features

• Updates and upgrades each node.
• Installs specified packages (and Log2Ram).
• Creates admin group and users listed in users_admin.
• Changes hostnames using prefix and index from inventory.
• Sets GPU memory split.
• Changes timezone and locale.
• Disables HDMI to save power.
• Disables IPv6 on specified interfaces.
• Changes SSH port.
• Disallows SSH root login and empty passwords.
• Disallows SSH password authentication if an SSH key is provided.
• Allows SSH password authentication within an IP range, if specified.

Defaults

• Updates and upgrades each node.
• Installs Log2Ram with 128MB RAM size for the log folder.
• Sets GPU memory to 16MB.
• Disables HDMI.
• Disables IPv6 on wlan0 and eth0.

---

Role Variables

# All uncommented lines are default settings

locale: 'fr_FR.UTF-8'
timezone: 'Europe/Paris'

# Example: 'node' will result in node0, node1, node2...
#hostname_prefix: 'rpi_'

# Additional packages to install
packages:
  - git
  - tmux
  - vim
  - nmon
  - neofetch

# Changes SSH port
#ssh_port: 22

# RAM size for log2ram folder in megabytes
log2ram_size: '128'

# GPU memory split in megabytes
gpu_mem: '16' # 16, 64, 128 or 256

# Disable HDMI to save power
disable_hdmi: true

# Disable IPv6 on specified interfaces
disable_ipv6_interfaces:
  - wlan0
  - eth0

# Samba configuration
samba_packages:
  - samba-common
  - samba
  - samba-client

samba_services:
  - smbd
  # - nmbd

#samba_netbios_name: monserveur
samba_configuration_dir: /etc/samba
samba_configuration: "{{ samba_configuration_dir }}/smb.conf"

---

Example Playbook

This is the playbook who use the role. You can see the vars array of 3 tasks familly you can turn on/off.

- name: Configure some new group of one Raspberry Pi

  # Hostname or group name from the inventory file
  hosts: new
  
  # hosts: new # if you want to run the playbook on all hosts in the inventory, use 'all' instead of 'new'
  # hosts: un nom de machine ou un groupe de machines

  become: true
  gather_facts: true

  vars:
    do_mandatory: true
    do_optional: true
    do_experimental: false

  roles:
    - raspberry_pi

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Credits & Acknowledgements

This role is inspired by and based on the excellent work of zjael/raspberry_pi (GitHub repo). Many ideas, structure and best practices come from this original project—thanks to the author for sharing his work with the community!