This howto describes how to install a Chromium based kiosk using minimal installation.

Download Raspbian Booster Lite edition at: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ Use Etcher or whatever to install the downloaded zip on a SD card.

Use raspi-config to set network and change password of the pi user

sudo raspi-config

systemctl enable ssh.service
systemctl start ssh.service

The goal is to make a Kiosk so we can disconnect the power and do no harm to the filesystem. We also want to limit SDCard wear.

apt-get update
apt-get -y upgrade
apt-get -y remove --purge triggerhappy logrotate dphys-swapfile dc nano
apt-get -y autoremove --purge

Edit the following file and add “fastboot noswap ro” to the end of the line so it looks something like this:

/boot/cmdline.txt

console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=6c586e13-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait fastboot noswap ro

apt-get -y install busybox-syslogd
apt-get -y remove --purge rsyslog

Edit fstab so it looks something like this. Your PARTUUIDs are different!

/etc/fstab

proc                  /proc             proc    defaults                                    0 0
PARTUUID=6c586e13-01  /boot             vfat    defaults,ro                                 0 2
PARTUUID=6c586e13-02  /                 ext4    defaults,noatime,ro                         0 1
tmpfs                 /tmp              tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=1777,size=100m 0 0
tmpfs                 /var/tmp          tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=30m            0 0
tmpfs                 /var/log          tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,size=100m 0 0
tmpfs                 /var/run          tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,size=2m   0 0
tmpfs                 /var/lib/lightdm  tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=30m            0 0
tmpfs                 /home/pi          tmpfs   defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=500m           0 0

rm -rf /var/lib/dhcp /var/lib/dhcpcd5 /var/spool /etc/resolv.conf
ln -s /tmp /var/lib/dhcp
ln -s /tmp /var/lib/dhcpcd5
ln -s /tmp /var/spool
touch /tmp/dhcpcd.resolv.conf
ln -s /tmp/dhcpcd.resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
rm /var/lib/systemd/random-seed
ln -s /tmp/random-seed /var/lib/systemd/random-seed
cp /lib/systemd/system/systemd-random-seed.service /etc/systemd/system/systemd-random-seed.service

Edit the copied service file and make the Service section look like this:

/etc/systemd/system/systemd-random-seed.service

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.
.
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStartPre=/bin/echo "" >/tmp/random-seed
ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed load
ExecStop=/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed save
TimeoutSec=30s

Because /var/spool is also a tmpfs filesystem, we need to disable that directory to become mask 0755. Comment out the following line so it looks like this:

/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/var.conf

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.
#d /var/spool 0755 - - -

I need to rotate the screen, because I use the monitor in portrait mode. 0=normal, 1=90 degrees CW, 2=180 degrees CW, 3=90 degrees CCW, and 4=upside down

/boot/config.txt

display_rotate=3
disable_splash=1