171 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
171 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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type: "blog-post"
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title: "Running Grafana Kiosk on a Raspberry pi"
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description: "The motivation behind setting up a raspberry pi for kiosk mode, and sacrificing a tv, is that at work we've got kind of this control center factor, where at a glance, we can quickly get an overview of a problem. If an alert goes, it is super easy to just look up and there you go, you can see the spike in CPU, requests you name it. "
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draft: false
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date: "2023-07-26"
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updates:
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- time: "2023-07-26"
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description: "first iteration"
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tags:
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- '#blog'
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---
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# Introduction
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The motivation behind setting up a raspberry pi for kiosk mode, and sacrificing
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a tv, is that at work we've got kind of this control center factor, where at a
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glance, we can quickly get an overview of a problem. If an alert goes, it is
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super easy to just look up and there you go, you can see the spike in CPU,
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requests you name it.
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And it looks super cool :D
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# Prerequisites
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You are gonna need a raspberry pi (ofc) or another small mini pc. It doesn't
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technically have to be a raspberry pi, but the official docs, and this guide is
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certainly geared towards it.
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I am using a:
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- Raspberry pi 4
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- A monitor / TV. I am usually using the tv.
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- A grafana server somewhere reachable by the raspberry pi
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# Installation
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I won't go too deep into the installation, I've used the raspberry pi imager, to
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setup an sd-card, with raspberryp os 64 bit, You may have to choose the 32 bit
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version if you're running on an older pi. I am choosing the default, not the
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lite version, you want the desktop to be setup.
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You can change the name of the user if you want, you will just have to swap out
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the pi username later.
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Simply hook it up to a display, get a keyboard and mouse (or ssh connection), I
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did everything through an ssh connection personally.
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## Grafana-kiosk
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Grafana actually publishes an app for running a kiosk mode grafana dashboard, it
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is just a single binary and can be fetched from their github page:
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https://github.com/grafana/grafana-kiosk
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Simply download the binary that you need:
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```bash
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lscpu | grep Arch
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```
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First figure out which architecture you're on. Raspberry pi 4 returns aarch64,
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which maps to linux-arm64. Older raspberry pi editions, map to an armv7 or below
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(I believe)
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Next grab the release (make sure to look for an updated version)
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```bash
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export VERSION="v1.0.6" # as of 2023-07-26
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export KIOSK_ARCH="linux.arm64"
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wget "https://github.com/grafana/grafana-kiosk/releases/download/$VERSION/grafana-kiosk.$KIOSK_ARCH"
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chmod +x "grafana-kiosk.$KIOSK_ARCH"
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```
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Now you should have got the executable in the home directory, you are free to
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move it to a more appropriate place, but make sure to update the paths later.
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Now give it a whirl using the default settings, this will show stats from a
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template grafana dashboard provided by grafana themselves.
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```bash
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./grafana-kiosk.$KIOSK_ARCH
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```
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After a few seconds the built in chromium browser will open and you should see
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the grafana page loading. To turn it off simply `Ctrl+C` the process.
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Now we have a few choices for auto-setup. The official docs mention a few
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different ways you can do it:
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https://github.com/grafana/grafana-kiosk/blob/main/README.md#automatic-startup
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I will personally use systemd, as it is a fairly convenient and homogenous way
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of doing it. I am also not running LXDE on my workstation, so I'd rather choose
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something I am slightly more familiar with.
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## Setup Systemd
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First we need to create a systemd service. I am personally using neovim, but you
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are free to choose regular vim or nano, if you prefer.
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First grab yourself a super user session
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```bash
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sudo su
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<enter password>
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```
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And create the file
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```bash
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nvim /etc/systemd/system/grafana-kiosk.service
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```
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Now enter the contents:
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```bash
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[Unit]
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Description=Grafana Kiosk
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Documentation=https://github.com/grafana/grafana-kiosk
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Documentation=https://grafana.com/blog/2019/05/02/grafana-tutorial-how-to-create-kiosks-to-display-dashboards-on-a-tv
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After=network.target
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[Service]
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User=nefarious
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Environment="DISPLAY=:0"
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Environment="XAUTHORITY=/home/nefarious/.Xauthority"
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ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 30
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ExecStartPre=xset s off
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ExecStartPre=xset -dpms
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ExecStartPre=xset s noblank
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ExecStart=/home/pi/grafana-kiosk.linux.arm64 -URL <your-playlist-url> -login-method local -username <your-user> -password <your-password> -playlists true -lxde-home /home/pi/ -lxde true
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[Install]
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WantedBy=graphical.target
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```
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This is specifically setup to use playlists, if you want to do the same, simply
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create or view a playlist in grafana, and copy the shareable link or url to it.
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Simple as that. I am also just using a user here, but checkout the options for
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using api tokens or an oauth setup if this is used professionally.
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Now we need to instruct systemd to reload all unit files
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```bash
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systemctl daemon-reload
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```
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And enable our service
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```bash
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systemctl enable --now grafana-kiosk
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```
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This will both enable and start the grafana-kiosk service. Not that this will
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take atleast 30 seconds to take effect because of the 30 seconds sleep. You can
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reduce or remove that at your own risk.
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If it succeeds you should after a while see the same as before when you executed
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the grafana-kiosk binary. Now it should display your dashboards instead tho.
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If nothing happens or you get an error message, simply check with
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`systemctl status grafana-kiosk` or using `journalctl -u grafana-kiosk`.
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That should be it, you should now have a live dashboard view, which will be
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automatically updated, when you update your grafana setup
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