PiBakery

[Jon Davies]

From the article:

"...

What if you could configure Raspbian before you booted your Raspberry Pi?

..."

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/configure-raspberry-pi-installation-pibakery/

"...

The solution is PiBakery, a superb block-based configuration tool for Windows and Mac computers (a Linux version is in development) 

..."

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Cheers,

Jon.

[Alistair MacDonald]

Good find Jon. That could save a lot of faffing, especially when
setting up headerless.

Alistair

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[Jon Davies]

Yep!  I have Google Now to thank for that find :)

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Cheers,

Jon.

[Will McElderry]

Interesting find indeed!

There isn't a Linux version (yet), so ...

If anyone is using Linux and wants to do this, you can mount the root ext4 partition on the SD card (or the source image using the loopback adaptor with 'offset') to configure the network by editing

    ${mnt}/etc/network/interfaces

 but modifying packages needs to be done post boot...

I'd expect there is a way to use the host version of apt-get in a chroot that will work for correct cross-architecture installation of sources, but I've not needed it yet. If anyone's done it, it'd be good to know?

If anyone wants a walk through to get them comfortable with the above Linux stuff, let me know.

W.

[Dan Nixon]

The comments in the article and the quote from the creator really go to show how there is a vastly expanding difference in the number of people that use Linux and the number of people that actually understand Linux.

As Will points out you can get a Pi on a network very easily without having any additional hardware, from there you can get SSH which will get you everything else you could possibly want to do.

I suppose the GUI peasants will always want their fluffy graphical way of doing simple things.

Dan

[Gregory Fenton]

Bonus points to Dan for using "GUI peasants" in a sentence that makes sense.

Greg

[Jon Davies]

I didn't read the whole article.  Can it be used for things other than setting network settings prior to first boot?  Isn't it handy for anything else?

Wrt Will's and Dan's responses, I have headless initial setups for years:
> Image an SD
> Plug in the SD
> Plug in a network cable
> Plug in power
> Scan the network using Fing
> Look for the correct MAC (or the company 'Raspberry Pi Foundation')
> Note the IP
> Open an SSH connection on my PC to the corresponding IP

Winner winner chicken dinner :D

...if you don't know your MAC and you're at a Pi event, and you're connecting to the event network, and there are a bajillion other Pi's, you may be a little stuck. ;) Go get a monitor and cable...

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016, 12:50 Gregory Fenton, <gregor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bonus points to Dan for using "GUI peasants" in a sentence that makes sense.

Greg

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Cheers,

Jon.

[Alistair MacDonald]

I confess I went direct to the site missing bypassing the article. You
can set up the network including wifi details, as well as start
services and run scripts. I think this can be done with the NOOBS
distro without the app by editing some obscure json settings, but this
is not at all user friendly. The real advantage to me is that it
appears to work on Windows (that can not mount esx4 partitions)
without needing a high skill level (that most Pi users don't have). If
you are a frequent Linux user you probably don't need the tool in the
first place.

Alistair

[Dan Nixon]

I think it can, it looks like it can automate software setup, installations, general stuff.

Linux has had a thing that has been able to do that for years, its called Bash.

Dan

[Dan Nixon]

The other advantage of the SD card method is that you can provide authentication for WiFi, or an IP if the wired network does not have DHCP.

Dan

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 at 13:11 Jon Davies <jon.d...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Will McElderry]

Just for clarification - my point was that it doesn't work on Linux, but there are ways. Not everyone knows those ways so I'm happy to talk about them, if anyone wants it.

To add to the discussion on how to set up a pi headless and discover its dynamic IP:

I've used two other methods:

    1. Get the Pi to periodically send a broadcast UDP packet, and listen for it

    2. use a static IP alias (usually on eth0) so you can use both DHCP and know what IP it will be on.I recommend picking an IP address outside of the normal subnet, so it will only be accessible to another machine manually configured to access it, probably with another IP alias)

W.

[Alistair MacDonald]

I think it was Jon set his up to send an email each time. The down
side of this is you receive an email each time you boot your Pi.

Alistair

[Dan Nixon]

My point was that if users actually bothered to RTFM then this tool would have no reason to exist.

It does not do anything that could not already be done, it just looks nicer.

As for mounting extX partitions on Windows, there are many tools that can do that.

Dan

[Alistair MacDonald]

Dan, I think you don't quite grasp how daunting all that is to those
who are not as technically minded as you. We are comparing Word to
LaTeX here. If the option is installing a simple tool, or installing
drivers that I don't understand, ignoring security warning message I
have been told not to ignore, and trying to grasp concepts that are
completely foreign to me, I would choose the simple tool every time.

What you need to do is spend half a day doing front end IT support and
then it will all make a lot more sense. Next time my family call with
an issue I will get them to call you. It will be for your own good and
in no way is me trying to get out of a 3 hour long call of pain. Other
Maker Space members will no doubt also have families needing support
should that not be enough. :-)

Alistair

[Dan Nixon]

And when the simple tool breaks or does not work you have no idea what wen't wrong or how to fix it.

The "conventional" way to do this is not something strange and confusing either, it has been documented several times with specific regard to the Raspberry Pi, therefore is probably at the idiot proof level it needs to be to be useful.

Having worked in front line support before I know exactly what you're trying to say, however the important difference is that people with issues there couldn't care less about how anything works, they just want it to work. I would have hoped that people playing about with the Raspberry Pi wouldn't be adverse to actually learning something other than the very specific thing they wanted to.

Dan

[Alistair MacDonald]

> And when the simple tool breaks or does not work you have no idea what wen't
> wrong or how to fix it.

...and at that point you call Alistair as he knows something about
computers so must know the answer. That is unless he can fool Dan is
to taking the call. :-)

Alistair

[Jon Davies]

>people with issues there couldn't care less about how anything works, they just want it to work

Everyone needs a carrot dangler/low hanging fruit to get hooked.

Eg: when I wanted to fly a quad copter, I first bought a bind-and-fly Hubsan.  It flies out of the box (not quite!), job done.

No need to find a frame to fit motors, ESCs to match the motors, suitable flight controller, pdb to match the total motor load, battery to cope with all the above, updating the flight controller firmware, tuning the PIDs.

All of the above (frame/ESC/flight controller setup etc.) was taken care of by some engineers in the Hubsan factory.  I started by learning to fly first, and invested time in only that aspect.  I couldn't care less about anything else, because if I lost interest at that point, I had wasted £30 and had fun trying to fly the quad.

N00bs to the Pi want to spend the £30 and get results, then worry about the more detailed time investing stuff later on, if they still have an interest.  These tools make sense to me, in that regard.

Hope that helps make sense why things like this PiBakery and the n00bs SD installer exist.

:)

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Cheers,

Jon.