smartgic.prepi

Ansible Role: Prepi

This Ansible role helps you set up and optimize a Raspberry Pi 4B board.

prepi means "Prepare Raspberry Pi".

Important Note: You are responsible for the choices you make with this role. You choose the firmware[1] and EEPROM[2] you want. The same goes for overclocking[3]. Remember, overclocking needs good cooling!

This role can do the following tasks (based on your preferences):

Update Raspberry Pi OS to the latest version
Add a Debian backports repository (you can change this)
Update firmware to the next branch, providing kernel 5.10 and edge firmware (you can change this)
Update EEPROM to the beta version for new features (you can change this)
Speed up boot time by setting initial_turbo
Overclock the Raspberry Pi to 2GHz (you can change this)
Use a RAMDisk for /tmp
Optimize SD card read/write settings for the root partition
Manage I2C, SPI & UART interfaces (you can change this)
Set the CPU governor to performance mode to avoid interruptions (you can change this)
Install and set up PulseAudio (not system-wide) (you can change this)
Restart the Raspberry Pi after installing new firmware or EEPROM (you can change this)

This role was designed for a Raspberry Pi 4B using Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit.

Please check the documentation links below before making decisions.

Requirements

Raspberry Pi 4B or later
Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit (needed for boards with more than 4GB of RAM)

Role Variables

Here are the available variables with their default values (found in defaults/main.yml):

---
# System user to add to system groups like gpio, audio, etc...
prepi_pi_user: pi

# Raspberry Pi hostname
prepi_hostname: smartgic-pi4b8-13

# Set the CPU governor
#  - ondemand (saves power but lower performance)
#  - performance (uses more power but better performance)
prepi_cpu_governor: performance

# Use fast DNS nameservers (CloudFlare and Google)
# Note: DHCP may overwrite these changes
prepi_nameservers:
  - 1.1.1.1
  - 8.8.8.8

# Update the firmware
prepi_firmware_update: yes

# Firmware branch to use
#  - master (stable)
#  - next (edge firmware and kernel)
prepi_firmware_branch: next

# EEPROM release to use
#  - critical (rarely updated)
#  - stable (updated when new features are tested)
#  - beta (new features tested here first)
prepi_eeprom: beta

# Overclock CPU/GPU
prepi_overclock: yes

# Caution with this; it allows for a higher voltage
prepi_force_turbo: no

# CPU frequency to overclock
# If unstable, lower this value
prepi_cpu_freq: 2000

# GPU frequency to overclock
prepi_gpu_freq: 650

# Voltage to use; higher CPU clock means higher voltage
# 6 is the limit without setting prepi_force_turbo to yes
prepi_voltage: 6

# Enable I2C interface
prepi_i2c_enable: yes

# Enable SPI interface
prepi_spi_enable: yes

# Disable UART interface
prepi_uart_enable: no

# Install and configure PulseAudio
prepi_pulseaudio: yes

# Keep PulseAudio persistent when user disconnects, start at boot
prepi_pulseaudio_daemon: yes

# Enable Debian backports repository for the latest packages
prepi_backports_enable: yes

# Restart Raspberry Pi when installing new firmware or EEPROM
prepi_reboot: yes

# Disable onboarding screen configuration (for Raspberry Pi OS desktop)
prepi_disable_onboarding_screen: yes

Dependencies

Same requirements as above.

Example Playbook

An inventory file with a rpi group that has one host named rpi4b01 with the IP address 192.168.1.97.

[rpi]
rpi4b01 ansible_host=192.168.1.97 ansible_user=pi

Basic playbook for the rpi group using the pi user to connect via SSH (based on the inventory) with some custom variables.

---
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: no
  become: yes

  # Install Python using raw module to ensure requirements are met
  pre_tasks:
    - name: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      raw: apt-get install -y python3
      changed_when: no

- hosts: rpi
  become: yes

  vars:
    prepi_hostname: smartgic-pi4b8-13
    prepi_cpu_freq: 2000
    prepi_cpu_governor: performance
    prepi_force_turbo: yes

  tasks:
    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.prepi
      tags:
        - prepi
        - raspberry