On Sunday 22 July 2018 at 17:17:43, wirelessduck@??? wrote:

> > On 22 Jul 2018, at 23:17, Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> wrote:
> >
> > Doesn't Raspberry pi normally boot from the microSD card it uses for its
> > main file system?

USB sticks are generally cheaper for the same capacity, and some people think
they're more reliable (I don't have a personal opinion).

Raspberry Pi 3 B can indeed boot from USB, and the Pi 3 B+ can also do PoE,
and network boot (although I doubt either is a help for this project).

> > Thus all you need to do is make 50 copies of one SD card and stick them
> > into the microSD card slots of the pi's.
> >
> > So once you manage to make one bootable image, you won't need to make an
> > installers. You'll just need a machine to copy microsd cards.
> >
> > I run my Raspberry pi with a stock microSD card image from Devuan.
> > You should be able to do the same, and after booting, install or
> > uninstall packages as desired. THen replicate the resulting card 50
> > times for your 50 mchines.
>
> If you’re running sshd on this you would want to regenerate the server keys
> for each individual installation?

a) not necessarily - there's no reason server keys need to be unique,
especially in a private network space

b) the simplest solution if you want unique keys would simply be to delete the
keys from /etc/ssh in the image before replicating it - then they will get
automatically created when each card is started for the first time


Antony.

--
"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times - stop exaggerating!"

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