ANSIBLE POST INSTALL

Automating The Boring Linux Machine Post Installation Tasks With Ansible

Contents

• About the Project
• Requirements
• Installing Ansible On Node Machine
• Installing OpenSSH On Both Machines
• How To Run The Playbook
• Running Issues

About the Project

The aim of this project is to automate the post installation tasks for Linux machines:

• Saves time and energy.
• Ansible being idempotent means change commands are not run unless needed.
• Just start the playbook and grab a cup of coffee!! :D

Requirements

• Ansible [core 2.12.2] installed on node machine.
• OpenSSH server and client installed on both machines.
• Python3.8 or newer installed on both machines.

Installing Ansible On Node Machine

Ansible can be installed and set to run at startups using the following commands:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
$ sudo apt install ansible

Check whether ansible has been successfully installed in the machine with:

ishraque@ansimac:~$ ansible --version
  ansible [core 2.12.2]
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/ishraque/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /home/ishraque/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.8.10 (default, Nov 26 2021, 20:14:08) [GCC 9.3.0]
  jinja version = 3.0.3
  libyaml = True

Installing OpenSSH On Both Machines

OpenSSH client and server can be installed with:

sudo apt install openssh-client openssh-server

How To Run The Playbook

The following needs to be made sure before the playbook is run:

1. OpenSSH server is installed in the target machine.
2. The node machine can successfully ping and ssh into the target machine.

Changes are need to be done to the inventory.yml file before the playbook can be run successfully:

1. Add new hosts to the inventory.ymlfile as required.

---
all:
  children:
    user_hosts:
      hosts:
        192.168.X.X:
            ansible_user: user1
            username: user1
        192.168.X.Y:
            ansible_user: user2
            username: user2

Finally the playbook can be run with the following command:

$ ansible-playbook -v playbook.yml --extra-vars "@password_secret.yml"

Running Issues

• Currently no running issues. :)