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RevPi Cloning Tutorial

You want to distribute an existing system to other devices, i.e. clone it. What you have to consider is explained here.

The license of the RevPi Connect+ feat. CODESYS is bound to a device, thus cannot be cloned.

Instruction

  1. Create a golden image, i.e. a copy of the system image to be distributed or cloned.

    1. Think about which settings you want to change beforehand, i.e. passwords, network configuration, time-server, SSH access, etc.

    2. https://revolution.kunbus.com/tutorials/images/install-jessie/?noredirect=en_US

  2. Copy this image to another device.

    1. see link above

  3. Boot and login to the device.

  4. Reset the hardware configuration by removing the respective entries in /boot/config.txt

    1. Open the file /boot/config.txt in an editor with root permissions:

      sudo nano /boot/config.txt
    2. Navigate to the block labeled [all] and remove the lines starting with dtoverlay=revpi- and dtparam=eth

    3. Save the file and reboot the RevPi

  5. Run the command:

    pi@RevPi12345:~ $ sudo revpi-factory-reset Usage: revpi-factory-reset <compact|connect|core> <serial> <mac addr> (see front plate)This will set MAC address, hostname and credentials as on the sticker of the device

    This will also maximize the partition according to the eMMC flash, i.e. 8,16 or 32 GB

  6. Reboot the device

    sudo reboot
  7. Login using the credentials from the sticker

The default key map changed since Buster to English, i.e. QWERTY

Dos and Don’ts

  • If there are problems with network access, it may be because there are multiple devices on the network with the same MAC address. This leads to ARP conflicts. Perform step (5).

  • You may use this guide to copy from i.e. RevPi Core 3 to a RevPi Core 3+ device.

  • You should not use this guide to copy to different RevPi types unless you know what you are doing. I.e. RevPi Core 3 to RevPi Connect.

  • Your target devices should have more or equal eMMC space available. So you cannot copy a RevPi Core 3+ 16GB image to a RevPi Core 3 with 4GB eMMC space. This can be performed if you create your own custom image, i.e. via: https://github.com/RevolutionPi/imagebakery

  • If you want to avoid using a PC, you may use a RevPi Module to flash data to another RevPi Module as well. There is the Linux equivalent of the RPiBoot.exe tool for Linux:

    https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot

    You can then use i.e. “fdisk -l” and “dd” in a bash script to automate your commands.

  • You may use PiShrink - can easily shrink your image. On first boot, the image is then resized.
    https://github.com/Drewsif/PiShrink

  • You can access the production information, i.e. serial number, etc. on the that are supported via hat-EEPROM (RevPi Connect 4, etc.) via

https://gitlab.com/revolutionpi/revpi-hat-eeprom

 

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