hal9k-display — Ansible

Reproduces the hal9k-display Arch Linux host (a multi-screen kiosk/display machine at hal9k.dk).

Quick start

# 1. Install Ansible + community collections
pip install ansible
ansible-galaxy collection install community.general ansible.posix

# 2. Decrypt secrets when you need to edit them
ansible-vault edit vars/secrets.yml

# 3. Run the playbook
ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini site.yml

.vaultpass contains the vault password and must not be committed to version control. It is already listed in .gitignore. ansible.cfg points Ansible at it automatically via vault_password_file = .vaultpass.

Roles

Role	What it does
base	Hostname, locale (en_US.UTF-8), timezone (Europe/Copenhagen), keyboard (us), zram swap, GRUB
networking	systemd-networkd + systemd-resolved; Ethernet/WLAN/WWAN DHCP profiles
users	hal9k user (uid 1000), SSH authorised key, sudo, autologin on tty1, sway autostart from .bashrc
packages	All explicitly-installed pacman packages (pacman -Qe)
mosquitto	Local MQTT broker on port 1883 + bridge to mqtt.hal9k.dk:8883
kiosk	Sway config, Firefox multi-screen kiosk (kiosk.sh), serve.py screen-grabber HTTP API, refresh helper, ydotool daemon, clock web app
mqtt_logger	Python mqtt-logger service (uv venv), InfluxDB env file, user systemd unit
heartbeat	/usr/local/bin/hal9k-heartbeat + systemd timer (minutely MQTT heartbeat)

Secrets

vars/secrets.yml (ansible-vault encrypted):

Variable	Description
mosquitto_remote_password	Password for the hal9k user on mqtt.hal9k.dk
mqtt_logger_influxdb_token	InfluxDB API token for influxdb.belunktum.dk

Notes

• The kiosk/files/GortonDigitalLight.otf font is included as-is from the running host. Replace with a licensed copy if needed.
• The mqtt-logger Python source is vendored under roles/mqtt_logger/files/mqtt_logger_src/. uv sync is run on the target to build the virtualenv.
• No disk partitioning / GRUB installation is automated — the playbook assumes a working Arch Linux base install (UEFI, GPT, btrfs with subvolumes @, @home, @pkg, @log, EFI partition at /boot).