Over the past few weeks, I’ve accumulated 3 Raspberry Pi’s. The first (aptly named Raspberry) has taken over the primary function of my linux partition on my desktop – the home media server. The second (named Apple) has become an inbound / outbound networking endpoint with PiHole and sson-to-have-more features. My 3rd pi, named Blueverry (hopefully you see where the naming convention is heading) will be a development box.
My initial thought was to have Blueberry be a pi that I can really mess around with, and not worry about trashing anything. I’ve installed a modified image of Raspian which includes a command to factory reset the pi. That way if I accidentally delete the entire /etc folder, I can safely reset the device to a useable state.
However, the factory reset command lacks the ability to be configured so it reinstalls everything as well – ssh keys, configs, docker, etc… So at the same time, I started really digging into Ansible. With Ansible, I was able to create a few playbooks that would setup a raspberry pi to a preferred state. My favourite programs installed, ssh keys added, configurations set, and a few other house-keeping chores.
I then spoke with a friend of mine and asked for a really small program. I figured that it wouldnt be an issue. I could create the program and host it on my site for free.
But at that moment I realized that all of my CI tools have been long erased. I used to host an instance of Jenkins on my desktop that would upload and publish work done on a peraonal website onto this server. I stopped developing for it because I ran into a time constraint – I was doing more developing for my blog, rather than writing blog posts. Thats why I ended up installing Drupal and ditching the custom site project.
So here we are. Ive got a custom raspian image that can be factory reset; a few ansible playbooks to get a pi up and running in no time; Yet this pi will probably host a CI tool and start uploading code to my personal site.
Looks like I need to ask the SO if I can get a 4th Pi, but I cant think of anything other than “Carrot Pie”.