Gladys Assistant — Raspberry Pi OS image

Automated build of a Raspberry Pi OS Lite 64-bit image with Gladys Assistant and Watchtower.

Images are built on GitHub Actions with pi-gen and pi-gen-action, on an ubuntu-24.04-arm runner (native aarch64 build, required for Raspberry Pi OS arm64 images).

What is included

Setting	Value
Base OS	Raspberry Pi OS Lite, Debian Trixie, arm64
Hostname	gladys
User / password	pi / raspberry
SSH	Enabled
Timezone (Gladys container)	UTC
Docker	Pre-installed
Setup page	Shown on first boot while Gladys downloads (gladysassistant/gladys-setup-in-progress)
Gladys	Started on first boot (gladysassistant/gladys:v4)
Watchtower	Started on first boot (auto-updates Gladys)

Docker images are not baked into the disk image. On first boot, a lightweight setup page (~25 MB) is pulled and displayed on port 80, then Gladys and Watchtower are downloaded from Docker Hub.

Raspberry Pi Imager manifest

Each GitHub Release includes a raspberry-pi-imager.json file with the metadata required for a custom OS list (extract_size, extract_sha256, image_download_size, image_download_sha256, release_date, url, etc.).

The url field points to the release .zip on GitHub. If you mirror the image elsewhere (e.g. https://gladysassistant.com/download/latest-64.zip), update url before publishing your manifest.

Flash the image

1. Download the latest .zip from the repository GitHub Releases page (or use raspberry-pi-imager.json in Raspberry Pi Imager).

2. Flash with Raspberry Pi Imager (select the .zip file directly), or:

   unzip gladys-assistant-*.zip
   sudo dd if=gladys-assistant-*.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress

3. Boot the Pi on your LAN (Ethernet or Wi‑Fi configured as usual on Raspberry Pi OS).

4. Open http://<pi-ip-address>/ in a browser: a setup page appears within seconds while Gladys downloads in the background.

5. After a few minutes, Gladys replaces the setup page automatically on the same URL.

Verify first-boot progress:

ssh pi@gladys.local
sudo journalctl -u gladys-firstboot.service -f
docker ps

Supported hardware

Raspberry Pi 3, 4, 5, and Zero 2 W (64-bit capable boards).

Security notice

The image ships with default credentials (pi / raspberry) and SSH enabled, matching stock Raspberry Pi OS defaults. Change the password and consider SSH keys before exposing the device to untrusted networks.

Repository layout

stage2-gladys/          # Custom pi-gen stage (Docker + first-boot)
.github/workflows/      # CI build and release

Build locally (optional)

Requires a Debian-based host with enough disk space (~30 GB) and Docker:

git clone https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen.git --branch arm64 --depth 1
cd pi-gen
cp -r /path/to/raspberry-pi-gladys/stage2-gladys .
# Configure (see pi-gen-action inputs in .github/workflows/build-image.yml)
./build-docker.sh

Local builds are mainly for debugging; production images are produced by GitHub Actions.

Automation

Trigger	Action
Push to main	Build + artifact + GitHub Release
Weekly (Monday 03:00 UTC)	Rebuild with latest Raspberry Pi OS base
Manual (workflow_dispatch)	On-demand build

License

MIT — see LICENSE.