Computer systems used in the field of humanitarian technology are often based on general-purpose single-board computers, such as Raspberry Pis. While these systems offer great flexibility for developers and users, configuration and deployment either introduces overhead by executing scripts on multiple devices or requires deeper technical understanding when building operating system images for such small computers from scratch. In this paper, we present PIMOD, a software tool for configuring operating system images for single-board computer systems. We propose a simple yet comprehensive configuration language. In a configuration profile, called Pifile, a small set of commands is used to describe the configuration of an operating system image. Virtualization techniques are used during the execution of the profile in order to be distribution and platform independent. Commands can be issued in the guest operating system, providing access to the distribution specific tools, e.g., to configure hardware parameters. The implementation of PIMOD is made public under a free and open source license. PIMOD is evaluated in terms of user benefits, performance compared to on-system configuration, and applicability across different hardware platforms and operating systems.

中文翻译：

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PIMOD：用于配置单板计算机操作系统映像的工具

人道主义技术领域使用的计算机系统通常基于通用单板计算机，例如 Raspberry Pi。虽然这些系统为开发人员和用户提供了极大的灵活性，但配置和部署要么通过在多个设备上执行脚本来引入开销，要么在从头开始为此类小型计算机构建操作系统映像时需要更深入的技术理解。在本文中，我们介绍了 PIMOD，这是一种用于为单板计算机系统配置操作系统映像的软件工具。我们提出了一种简单而全面的配置语言。在称为 Pifile 的配置文件中，使用一小组命令来描述操作系统映像的配置。在配置文件的执行期间使用虚拟化技术，以便与分发和平台无关。命令可以在客户操作系统中发布，提供对分发特定工具的访问，例如配置硬件参数。PIMOD 的实现是在免费和开源许可下公开的。PIMOD 根据用户优势、与系统配置相比的性能以及跨不同硬件平台和操作系统的适用性进行评估。