draft for pi poe

content/posts/2024-03-10-dynamic-raspberry-pi-provisioning/index.md

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+---
+cover:
+  image: "posts/2024-03-10-dynamic-raspberry-pi-provisioning/banner.jpg"
+  relative: false
+  alt: "Ubuntu Login Prompt That Says Login Failed."
+  #caption: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
+author: "Eugene de Beste"
+title: "Automated and Dynamic Raspberry Pi Provisioning For The Lazy Homelabber"
+date: "2024-03-10"
+description: I'm lazy and don't like to manually reprovision SD cards or SSDs for use with my Raspberry Pi devices. I've developed an environment in which I can reprovision my Pis on demand without any physical intervention, which is useful for rapid prototyping. This blog post details my solution.
+categories:
+  - Technology
+tags:
+  - RaspberryPi
+  - Homelab
+  - Pi
+
+showtoc: true
+draft: true
+---
+
+Raspberry Pi's are great little devices to various purposes. I've got a couple of Pi4's for my homelab. That said, you'd probably be lying to me if you told me you were enthusiastic about the following scenario, espcially if you make a lot of changes and/or try a lot of different operating systems:
+
+1. Unplug Pi
+2. Remove storage device (SD/SSD)
+3. Plug storage device into PC
+4. Flash OS image to device
+5. Unplug device from PC
+6. Plug back into Pi
+7. Plug Pi back in
+8. Configure Pi after it boots
+
+I developed a solution for my homelab which allows me to reprovision my Pis on demand, without having to touch any of them. This blog post will detail my solution.
+
+
+<figure>
+    <img class="img-responsive" src="pi-cluster-on-switch.jpg" alt="My Raspberry Pi Collection"/>
+    <figcaption style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 13px; text-align: center"><i>My Raspberry Pi Collection</i></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+# Requirements
+
+## Hardware
+
+There are a few hardware requirements for getting this going:
+
+- A Raspberry Pi 4 (5 should work, but I don't have any)
+- An SD card reader
+- A managed PoE+ capable switch (I use an old [Cisco 2960X](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-2960-x-series-switches/datasheet_c78-728232.html))
+- A device to allow PoE for your Pi, such as [this splitter](https://www.amazon.com/Splitter-Standard-1000Mbps-Ethernet-TYPEC0503G/dp/B09GM8FB3X?th=1)
+- Some computer to use to provide network booting services
+
+## Software
+
+I'm using a combination of Canonical's [MAAS](https://maas.io/) (Metal as a Service) along with a custom Python-based webserver that controls the Cisco switch to change the state of the PoE output on the ports.
+
+# Setup
+
+## The Pi
+
+The Raspberry Pi4 does not ship with any embeded OS or firmware installed. It relies on a user to provision an SD card to either change booting paramters or boot to an operating system. We can take advantage of this to create a pre-boot environmnet that will allow for [PXE booting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment) the Pi.
+
+### Prepare the Firmware
+
+There is a software project that provides UEFI firmware images for the Pi to boot into. It can be found here: https://github.com/pftf/RPi4.