Home Server

This project contains Ansible scripts for setting up a home server. This server runs software such as:

• Home Assistant
• Plex Media Server

Setting up the build environment

I deploy to my home server using automated deployment scripts written in Ansible. I use vagrant to manage a virtual environment that I can test any changes I make before I deploy them. We'll need to do just a few things to get all that setup.

First we need to install some dependencies:

• Install some packages from apt:

  $ sudo apt-get install libssl-dev sshpass

  • libssl-dev: this is needed to compile cryptography, which pip will try to do when installing our local python dependencies.
  • sshpass: this is needed to run deployment against a physical raspberry pi, which uses an SSH password.

• Create a virtual environment:

  $ virtualenv venv
  (venv) $

  Notice how your shell prompt changes. virtualenv modifies some environment variables and creates a local place for python packages to be installed. You'll need to make sure to activate the virtual environment every time you start work in a new shell.

  Note that if your shell prompt already has (venv) in it, you can skip this step since your virtual environment is active.

  $ . ./env/bin/activate
  (venv) $

• Install required python packages:

  (venv) $ pip install -r local-requirements.txt

Now to start up the development vm, we just start vagrant:

• Start the virtual machine:

  (venv) $ vagrant up

  The first time you run vagrant up, it will automatically provision the machine, which means invoking ansible to install python and Home Assistant. If you make changes to any of the ansible files and need to test them by applying them to the virtual machine, you'll need to re-provision the VM, like so:

  (venv) $ vagrant provision

Setting up a Raspberry Pi

If you have a raspberry pi, you can use the same ansible scripts to deploy the home server applications to it. You'll need to ensure that the ip address, user, and password are correct for your pi. Open the file ansible/environments/raspberry-pi/groups. Mine looks like this:

[home-assistant]
192.168.1.13 ansible_user=pi ansible_ssh_pass=raspberry

Update the ip address, ansible_user, and ansible_ssh_pass to match your own.

Now simply provision your machine by invoking ansible-playbook, like so:

(venv) $ ansible-playbook -i ansible/environments/raspberry-pi ansible/playbooks/deploy/server.yml

Once this is complete, you should have a raspberry pi now acting as a home server. Let's do some checks to verify everything is running ok.

• Check that it's running Home Assistant by visiting <your-rpi-ip>:8123.