ems-openhours-kiosk-infra

Ansible provisioning for a Raspberry Pi 4 kiosk that displays the Eugene Makerspace Open Hours dashboard using Servo browser.

systemd
  ├── seatd                 (seat/GPU management)
  ├── ems-openhours         (python3 HTTP server on :8080)
  └── kiosk                 (cage wayland compositor → servo with WebDriver on :4444)
                                ↑
                      kiosk-ctl (remote control via WebDriver)

The dashboard web content is a separate repo: openhours-signage

Prerequisites

Raspberry Pi:

• Raspberry Pi 4 with Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm or later)
• SSH enabled, wifi configured
• The pi user can sudo without a password (default on Pi OS)

Your workstation:

• Ansible installed (apt install ansible or pip install ansible)
• SSH access to the Pi

Setup from scratch

1. Build Servo on the Pi

SSH into the Pi and build Servo from source:

ssh pi@ems-opensign.local
git clone https://github.com/servo/servo.git /home/pi/dashboard/servo
cd /home/pi/dashboard/servo
./mach build --release

This takes a long time on the Pi but avoids cross-compilation issues. The binary ends up at /home/pi/dashboard/servo/target/release/servo.

2. Configure the inventory

Edit ansible/inventory.ini with your Pi's address:

[kiosk]
ems-kiosk ansible_host=ems-opensign.local ansible_user=pi

3. Run the playbook

cd ansible
ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml

To preview what will change first:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml --check --diff

The playbook will:

• Install system packages (cage, seatd, curl, python3, git)
• Create a kiosk system user (groups: tty, video, render)
• Disable lightdm (it conflicts with cage for DRM access)
• Disable wifi power management and screen blanking
• Copy the Servo binary and resources to /opt/servo/
• Clone the dashboard web content to /opt/ems-openhours/
• Install kiosk-ctl to /usr/local/bin/
• Install and enable the systemd services

Updating

Update just the web content (pulls latest from git):

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml --tags content

Redeploy Servo after a rebuild on the Pi:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml --tags servo

Remote control

Control the kiosk over SSH using kiosk-ctl:

kiosk-ctl status              # Check if kiosk is responsive
kiosk-ctl reload              # Reload current page
kiosk-ctl navigate <url>      # Navigate to a URL
kiosk-ctl url                 # Print current URL
kiosk-ctl js <script>         # Execute JavaScript
kiosk-ctl screenshot out.png  # Save a screenshot

Troubleshooting

Check service logs:

sudo systemctl status kiosk
sudo journalctl -u kiosk -f

See NOTES.md for detailed notes on Pi 4-specific issues (GLES rendering, seatd, DRM conflicts, WebDriver quirks).

Repo layout

ansible/              Ansible playbook and supporting files
  playbook.yml        Main provisioning playbook
  inventory.ini       Pi connection details
  files/kiosk-ctl     WebDriver CLI control script
  templates/          Systemd service and config templates
openhours-signage/    Dashboard web content (submodule/clone of openhours-signage repo)
servo/                Servo browser source (built on the Pi)
NOTES.md              Implementation notes and troubleshooting
PLAN.md               Original architecture plan