Refactor

Simplified Recore and Replicape board image generation toolset, based on Armbian for Recore or Ubuntu images from RCN for beaglebone.

The starting point for Refactor is the Ubuntu console image, details are in the wiki here: http://wiki.thing-printer.com/index.php?title=ReFactor

ReFactor is a build-tool to install a printer's Firmware (at the moment Klipper), a printer control interface (OctoPrint), a touch-screen interface (Toggle w/ OctoPrint) and a few miscellaneous items (webcam streamer, network file share for gcode file uploads, etc.).

It sets a default password for access as root on new images (root:kamikaze), but leaves the root account alone otherwise. SSH is meant to be active and allow root login. The debian user is normally also setup and runs OctoPrint and Klipper. Its password is set to temppwd. Both root and debian passwords will need to be changed upon first login.

Usage

The images generated are focused on being a boot-strapped firmware for Thing-Printer control boards, such as Replicape and Recore. However PRs to make ReFactor an image generation tool for a wider range of single-board controllers is completely welcome. To support multiple platforms, the build script usage has been modified:

cd <path to Refactor git clone>
sudo ./build-image-in-chroot-end-to-end.sh <platform> [OPTIONAL: system setup script]

If not specified, the ansible-playbook that is used is SYSTEM_klipper_octoprint-DEFAULT.yml

The platform (required parameter) is one of:

• replicape
• recore
• pi
• pi64

The script then exports the platform ansible variable, and sources the BaseLinux/$platform/Linux file for a number of items:

• a URL for which base linux image to build from (pine64 armbian for pi64 and recore, RCN-built console debian 10.3 for replicape, raspbian for pi)
• the decompress() function, to allow the script to properly decompress the downloaded file and export the image file to where it can be mounted
• additional ansible parameters specific to the platform requirements. For the moment this is where the platform gets passed through, as well as the firmware variable.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Only the SYSTEM-[...].yml playbook files can work with the build-image-in-chroot-end-to-end.sh script. The INSTALL-[...].yml playbooks are provided as means for end-users to customize their running images. It is inadvisable to run a SYSTEM-[...].yml playbook on an already running system. And especially not during a print. That would cause a division by zero and make the printer disappear into its own micro black hole. Or release the magic smoke. Either way, not a good thing. You have been warned.

Example of running a task locally

Creating a complete image can take a long time. During development it's better to run a single task. Here is an example of re-installing Toggle on a platform on a running Recore board. ansible-playbook INSTALL-toggle.yml --extra-vars '{platform: recore}'

Contributing

Any contribution you make should be in the form of a PR in a separate branch and mull against master. It's nice to add a descriptive prefix like chore/clean-up-unused-code If you are trying to fix a bug, please prefix the PR with [bug], and mention the Github Issue # in the PR description.

In case you need help building an image to test your changes and do not have a build environment available, please submit your PR against goeland86/ReFactor, with a title prefixed with [Dev] to clearly identify that the features are still under active development.

Latest images

To verify images and always test the latest code changes, a Jenkins unit is running to build images for any commit to the master branch. Any tag created will generate a pre-release on the repository, with automatically generated and uploaded images attached. If you want to test a specific commit's image, you'll need to browse the Jenkins project to download the corresponding image (called artifact).

This Jenkins server is running on a pi 4, which means its capacity is limited to only one image build at a time, and despite the USB3 drive for I/O, an image for Replicape or Recore alone takes nearly an hour. It's also a recurring donation to the project by @goeland86 to keep it online and up to date.