pi-bake

Generate flashable, headless Raspberry Pi images. Flash one .img.gz per Pi, boot, SSH in. No setup-alpine interactive walk, no rpi-imager GUI clicking through pre-fill, no console on the Pi.

What gets baked

Per node, from CLI flags or the Python API:

• Hostname → /etc/hostname
• SSH pubkey → /root/.ssh/authorized_keys (mode 0600) + sshd PasswordAuthentication no
• WiFi creds (optional) → /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf so the Pi auto-joins on first boot. Omit for wired-only.
• Timezone, regulatory country (sensible defaults)
• First-boot script that apk adds the small set of packages (openssh-server, iproute2, etc.), enables services, then self-disables.

That's it. No role-specific code, no totaldns, no platform lock-in. Once the Pi is on the network, whatever orchestrator you use (pyinfra, Ansible, plain SSH) takes over.

Install

pip install pi-bake

System tools (one-time per dev machine):

# Fedora
sudo dnf install mtools dosfstools xz util-linux openssl tar cpio
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install mtools dosfstools xz-utils util-linux openssl tar cpio
# Alpine
apk add mtools dosfstools xz util-linux openssl tar cpio

Tooling by backend + mode (os_mode:):

Backend / mode	Tools	Root?
Alpine default (os_mode: diskless, or unset)	mtools + dosfstools + tar + cpio + openssl + ssh-keygen	NO
Alpine os_mode: ext4 (sys-mode, partitioned image)	losetup + mount + sfdisk + mkfs.vfat + mkfs.ext4 + xz + (above)	YES
Alpine os_mode: pxe (TFTP+HTTP tree, no flashable image)	tar + cpio + openssl + ssh-keygen	NO
Raspbian / Debian / Fedora	xz + losetup + mount + partprobe + lsblk + ssh-keygen	YES (losetup needs CAP_SYS_ADMIN)

For the sudo-requiring backends, the typical operator setup is either:

• Run pi-bake inside a privileged LXC container that gives it root without prompting your host. LXC setup is outside this project's scope (use whatever container/VM workflow you prefer); pi-bake just needs to be able to losetup + mount.
• Add passwordless sudoers entries for the specific commands pi-bake invokes (losetup, mount, umount, partprobe, tee, chmod, chown, mkdir, sh -c "cat >>"). Restrictive enough to be safe; broad enough to bake without prompting.

The Alpine baker doesn't need any of this — runs as a regular user via mtools.

Quick start

# What can we bake for what?
pi-bake list-boards
pi-bake list-os --board pi-zero-2-w

# Bake an Alpine image for a Pi Zero 2 W with WiFi creds.
pi-bake build \
  --board pi-zero-2-w \
  --os alpine \
  --hostname pi-radio-1 \
  --ssh-pubkey ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --wifi-ssid totaldns-lab \
  --wifi-psk secret \
  --out ~/sdcards/pi-radio-1.img.gz

# Flash. Replace mmcblk0 with your SD card's actual device.
# Local SD: zcat works directly.
zcat ~/sdcards/pi-radio-1.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

# Remote SD via SSH (e.g. flashing a Pi already PXE-booted that
# you'll then swap to SD-boot): use iflag=fullblock so the remote
# dd accumulates SSH-delivered chunks into proper 4 MB writes.
# Without it, dd short-reads per TCP packet, writes 32 KB at a
# time, and the SD card erase-block thrash makes the flash 100x
# slower (520 KB/s vs full speed). Discovered hands-on 2026-05-27.
xzcat ~/sdcards/pi-radio-1.img.xz | \
  ssh root@<remote-pi> 'dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M iflag=fullblock conv=fsync'

# Boot the Pi. Wait ~30s. Then:
ssh root@pi-radio-1.lan uptime

For wired-only nodes (eth0), omit the WiFi flags:

pi-bake build \
  --board pi-5 --os alpine --hostname boat \
  --ssh-pubkey ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --out ~/sdcards/boat.img.gz

YAML recipes (v0.0.5+)

Operators bake the same image from a YAML recipe. Better for multi-node deployments + version control:

pi-bake build --config ~/recipes/pi-5.yaml

Already have a working CLI invocation? Round-trip it to YAML:

pi-bake build \
  --board pi-5 --os alpine --hostname boat \
  --ssh-pubkey ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --out ~/sdcards/boat.img.gz \
  --to-yaml ~/recipes/boat.yaml \
  --no-bake

--no-bake skips the actual image build — useful when you only want to capture the recipe. Drop it to bake AND save the YAML.

References:

• pi-bake.example.yaml — annotated reference for every field, dnsmasq-style. Read once, never go hunting for options again.
• examples/ — minimal, tested recipes for common shapes (wifi-station, wired AP, CAN/RS485 HAT).

Validate a recipe without baking:

pi-bake build --config recipe.yaml --to-yaml /tmp/normalized.yaml --no-bake

This runs the strict validator (unknown keys are an error) and writes a canonical normalized YAML — surfaces schema errors instantly while you're editing.

Supported boards × OSes

Board	Alpine	Raspbian	Debian	Fedora
Pi Zero W	✓ (armhf)	✗ (32-bit ARMv6 not packaged)	✗	✗
Pi Zero 2 W	✓	✓ (32-bit ARMv7 / arm64)	✗	✗
Pi 3	✓	✓	✓	✗
Pi 4	✓	✓	✓	🟡
Pi 5	✓ (3.21+)	✓	✗ (raspi.debian.net has no Pi 5 build)	🟡

🟡 = Fedora bake produces a configured Fedora rootfs but the upstream Fedora ARM image isn't Pi-specific — operator must run arm-image-installer --target=rpi4|rpi5 on the output to inject Pi firmware before flashing. Pi-bootloader-shim is a future pi-bake feature (see ROADMAP.md).

Run pi-bake list-os --board <b> for the current matrix.

Status

All four backends (Alpine, Raspbian, Debian, Fedora) produce bootable / configurable images as of v0.5.0. Hardware- validation status differs by backend — Alpine (all three modes) has been bake-flash-boot tested on a CM4; Raspbian has been bake-tested on a Pi 5 with the v0.5.0 firstrun.sh path; Debian and Fedora have not been booted by pi-bake's maintainers, only bake-tested. See tested_bakes.yaml for the ledger (pi-bake list-os-versions annotates each catalog row with its test status: supported if there's a ledger entry, supported/untested otherwise).

Alpine has three modes:

• os_mode: diskless (default) — no-root, mtools-based, fast, apkovl-overlay shape. Easiest to run from any Linux host.
• os_mode: ext4 (v0.3.1+) — sys-mode Alpine on a real partitioned image. Requires sudo. The ONLY mode that supports os_version: edge, and the cleanest base for in-place apk upgrade linux-rpi. See examples/pi-5-alpine-ext4.yaml.
• os_mode: pxe (v0.3.2+) — network-boot recovery tree (TFTP+HTTP). Output is a directory, not a flashable image — operator deploys to /var/lib/tftpboot/<mac>/. Lab needs nginx (see ngnix_setup.md) + dnsmasq-tftp. See examples/pi-cm4-alpine-pxe.yaml.

Raspbian / Debian / Fedora use losetup + mount and require sudo (typically via LXC — see above).

See release_notes.md for a per-version summary of what shipped and ROADMAP.md for the planned + done list.

Python API

The CLI is a thin wrapper around pi_bake.build():

from pi_bake import build, NodeConfig

build(
    board="pi-zero-2-w",
    os_name="alpine",
    version=None,                       # latest known-good
    node=NodeConfig(
        hostname="pi-radio-1",
        ssh_pubkey=open(".../id_ed25519.pub").read(),
        wifi_ssid="totaldns-lab",
        wifi_psk="secret",
    ),
    out_path="~/sdcards/pi-radio-1.img.gz",
)

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for the numbered backlog + state table. Highlights of what's NOT yet shipped:

• #17 — A/B rootfs + watchdog auto-revert. Two root partitions; the watchdog reverts to the last-good slot if the new image fails its sanity check. Solves the "deploy bricks the Pi" failure mode.
• #18 — Secure boot (verified boot chain). U-Boot + FIT verified-boot for operators with physical-tamper threat models. Opt-in.
• #14 — Dynamic OS version discovery. Pull https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/ and the rpi downloads index instead of the hardcoded versions tuples in the catalog.
• #13 — Interactive --interactive wizard as a third entry point alongside flags + --config.

See feature_request.md for design gaps

• bugs surfaced during real-world use (candidate pool for the roadmap).

Why does this exist

Three reasons to bake images instead of using rpi-imager pre-fill or hand-running setup-alpine:

1. Per-node config in a script. Topology files (any shape — JSON, YAML, a hand-written shell script) drive pi-bake build in a loop. Lab grows from 1 Pi to 20 without 20 separate keyboard sessions.
2. Reproducible. Same inputs → same .img.gz. Re-flash a replacement SD card identically; clone a node by changing the hostname.
3. Alpine RPi has no rpi-imager pre-fill equivalent. This is the only convenient headless flow for the Pi Zero W / 2 W family running Alpine.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.