ptrsr/pi-ci repository overview

⁠PI-CI

A raspberry Pi emulator in a Docker image⁠ that lets developers easily prepare and flash Pi images.

NOTE: for the full README, refer to the GitHub repo⁠.

⁠Overview

The PI-CI project enables developers to easily:

• Run a Raspberry Pi VM.
• Prepare a Raspberry Pi configuration inside the VM.
• Flash the configuration to an SD card.

Example use cases:

• Preconfigure Raspberry Pi servers that work from first boot.
• Create reproducible server configurations using Ansible.
• Automate the distribution of configurations through a CI pipeline.
• Test ARM applications in a virtualized environment.
• Safely test backups without a second SD card.

Key features:

• Pi 3 and 4 support
• 64 bit (ARMv8) Raspbian OS included
• Internet access
• No root required
• Ansible preinstalled
• Safe, fully reproducible from source
• Tested and stable

⁠Usage

$ docker pull ptrsr/pi-ci
$ docker run --rm -it ptrsr/pi-ci

> usage: docker run [docker args] ptrsr/pi-ci [command] [optional args]
> 
> PI-CI: the reproducible PI emulator.
> 
> positional arguments:
>   command     [start, resize, flash]
> 
> optional arguments:
>   -h, --help  show this help message and exit
>   -v          show verbose output
> 
> Refer to https://github.com/ptrsr/pi-ci for the full README on how to use this program.

Each command has a help message, for example: docker run --rm -it ptrsr/pi-ci start -h.

⁠Start machine

Simply run a ptrsr/pi-ci container with the start command:

docker run --rm -it ptrsr/pi-ci start

Login using the default Raspbian credentials:

• Username: pi
• Password: raspberry

⁠Persistence

To save the resulting image, use a bind mount to /dist:

docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/dist:/dist ptrsr/pi-ci start

NOTE: this example will create and mount the dist folder in the current working directory of the host.

To restart the image, simply use the same bind mount.

⁠License

PI-CI is licensed under GPLv3⁠.