Is there a way to update multiple Raspberry Pi machines at the same time? Would it be possible to update them from a single copy of the image on the central Ubuntu PC server so that the download takes place only once?
The amount of Pis is 40.
-
1can you connect with ethernet/wifi? then just script an ssh call to each, ssh [email protected] command– robNov 13, 2014 at 8:24
Add a comment
|
5 Answers
You might want to look at Andrew Mulholland's work on Raspi-LTSP which uses a centralised controller for multiple Pis. It essentially uses the Pi as clients to connect to the central 'server' which can be a laptop or desktop machine. http://pi.gbaman.info/?p=256
Since the Pi boots from an SD card, you need either to update 40 cards using 'dd' to copy an image from your Ubuntu server, or use a bootable image like http://elinux.org/RPi_U-Boot that will pull the rest of the configuration from a TFTP server.
Don't mean to revive a dead question, but I've been using Ansible to great effect. You can take a look at https://github.com/heisters/node-omxplayer-sync-devops to see how I'm approaching it. It's nice because it just uses SSH, and doesn't require a client install on the pis.
-
-
The single download requirement is a little unclear to me. However, if there's a specific file you only want to download once, you can download it to the local machine and then copy it to the clients. I used to do something similar for installing the latest omxplayer: github.com/heisters/node-omxplayer-sync-devops/blob/master/…– IanOct 12, 2015 at 16:54
I would suggest to do as they do in most companies to manage a large amount of machines / a cluster / ... and use Puppet/Chef
Here is an article on how to install it.
-
This is pretty similar to something like Ansible. Just for context rather than criticism, the reason I went with Ansible over Puppet or Chef is that it's a lot easier to get running on both the clients and the server. On the clients, the only dependency is SSH. I think you may sacrifice some speed and/or features for that ease of install, so Ansible may not be right in all situations.– IanOct 12, 2015 at 16:58
You can use a dedicated over-the-air software updater to get safety (rollback in case of any failure) as well as control (deploy to groups, get status & logs, etc). Mender supports Raspbian updates: https://hub.mender.io/t/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-b-raspbian
