Table of Contents

• Supported Platforms
• Requirements
• Role Variables
  • Install
  • Config
  • Uninstall
• Dependencies
• Example Playbook
• License
• Author Information

Ansible role that installs and configures an Ansible controller: a software provisioning, configuration management and application-deployment tool.

* Debian
* Redhat(CentOS/Fedora)
* Ubuntu

Requires the unzip/gtar utility to be installed on the target host. See ansible unarchive module notes for details.

Variables are available and organized according to the following software & machine provisioning stages:

• install
• config
• uninstall

ansiblecan be installed using OS package management systems (e.g. apt, yum) or compressed archives (.tar, .zip) downloaded and extracted from various sources.

The following variables can be customized to control various aspects of this installation process, ranging from software version and source location of binaries to the installation directory where they are stored:

controller_user: <service-user-name> (default: ansible)

• dedicated service user and group used by ansible for privilege separation (see here for details)

package_name: <package-name-and-version> (default: ansible[-latest])

• name and version of the ansible package to download and install. Reference or run something like dnf --showduplicates list ansible in a terminal to display a list of available packages for your platform. ONLY relevant when install_type is set to package

install_type: <package | archive> (default: archive)

• package: supported by Debian and Redhat distributions, package installation of Ansible pulls the specified package from the respective package management repository.

  • Note that the installation directory is determined by the package management system and currently defaults to under /usr/{bin,lib, share} for both distros.

• archive: compatible with both tar and zip formats, archived installation binaries can be obtained from local and remote compressed archives either from the official releases index or those generated from development/custom sources.

install_dir: </path/to/installation/dir> (default: /opt/ansible)

• path on target host where the ansible binaries should be extracted to. ONLY relevant when install_type is set to archive

archive_url: <path-or-url-to-archive> (default: see defaults/main.yml)

• address of a compressed tar or zip archive containing ansible binaries. This method technically supports installation of any available version of ansible. Links to official versions can be found here. ONLY relevant when install_type is set to archive

archive_checksum: <path-or-url-to-checksum> (default: see defaults/main.yml)

• address of a checksum file for verifying the data integrity of the specified archive. While recommended and generally considered a best practice, specifying a checksum is not required and can be disabled by providing an empty string ('') for its value. ONLY relevant when install_type is set to archive.

checksum_format: <string> (default: see sha512)

• hash algorithm used for file verification associated with the specified archive or package checksum. Reference here for more information about checksums/cryptographic hashes.

galaxy_roles: <list-of-roles> (default: [])

• indicates collection of roles to install from either the Ansible Galaxy community repository or custom sources.

galaxy_collections: <list-of-collections> (default: [])

• indicates list of collections to install from either the Ansible Galaxy community repository or custom sources.

Configuration of the ansible controller can be expressed in a config file named ansible.cfg written in TOML or INI, a minimal markup language. Customary with INI configurations, each section represents a set of configuration options for various aspects of the Ansible controller's behavior. See here for a list of available configuration options and an example config here for reference.

Note: This file can be found under the directory specified by the ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable or in predefined locations loaded according to a set precedence order (as managed by the config_dir variable defined below).

The following variables can be customized to manage the content of this INI configuration:

config_dir: </path/to/configuration/dir> (default: /etc/ansible)

• path on target host where the aforementioned INI configuration file should be stored

config: {"<config-section>": {"<section-setting>": "<setting-value>",..},..} default: see defaults/main.yml

• Any configuration setting/value key-pair supported by ansible should be expressible within the config hash and properly rendered within the associated INI config. Values can be expressed in typical yaml/ansible form (e.g. Strings, numbers and true/false values should be written as is and without quotes).

  Furthermore, configuration is not constrained by hardcoded author defined defaults or limited by pre-baked templating. If the config section, setting and value are recognized by the ansible tool, 👍 to define within config.

  Keys of the config hash represent INI config sections:

  config:
    # [INI Section 'defaults']
    defaults: {}

  Values of config[<key>] represent key,value pairs within an embedded hash expressing config settings:

  config:
    # INI Section '[defaults]'
    defaults:
      # Section setting inventory with value of inventory host sources directory
      inventory: /var/data/ansible/inventory

Remove both package and archive installations as well as managed Ansible configs returning the target host to its configured state prior to application of this role (e.g. can be useful for recycling configuration settings during system upgrades).

The following variable(s) can be customized to manage this uninstall process:

perform_uninstall: <true | false> (default: false)

• whether to uninstall managed Ansible installations and configurations on a target host (see: handlers/main.yml for details)

None

default example:

- hosts: all
  roles:
  - role: 0x0I.ansible

install ansible from specified archive latest version:

- hosts: controller
  roles:
  - role: 0x0I.ansible
    vars:
      install_type: archive
      archive_url: https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.4.tar.gz
      archive_checksum: 2517bf4743d52f00d509396a41e9ce44e5bc1285bd7aa53dfe28ea02fc1a75a6

change configuration directory from default and alter path to store/search for roles:

- hosts: controller
  roles:
  - role: 0x0I.ansible
    vars:
      config_dir: /path/to/config/dir
      config:
        defaults:
          roles_path: /mnt/ansible/roles

alter log path and debug output for troubleshooting/debugging purposes:

- hosts: controller
  roles:
  - role: 0x0I.ansible
    vars:
      config:
        defaults:
           log_path: /mnt/log/ansible/debug.log
           debug: True

install a set of roles and collections by default:

- hosts: controller
  roles:
  - role: 0x0I.ansible
    vars:
      galaxy_roles:
        - 0x0I.systemd
      galaxy_collections:
        - newswangerd.collection_demo

MIT

This role was created in 2019 by O1.IO.