So I'm looking at creating a generic wrapper around the ansible-playbook command.
What I'd like to do is spin up a number of VMs (Vagrant or docker), based on the inventory supplied.
I'd use these VMs locally for automated testing using molecule, as well as manual function testing.
Crucially the number of machines in the inventory could change, so these need created prior to the run.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Stuart
You could use a tool like Terraform to run your docker images, and then export the inventory from Terraform to Ansible using something like terraform-inventory.
I think there's also an Ansible provisioner for Terraform.
Related
I am currently working on my final degree project and I have been asked to create a platform in which I have to generate a Vagrantfile (in general control vagrant) from an ansible playbook. Ansible will be running on a golang module. Then, once the Vagrantfile is generated, ansible will be used again to provision all the machines.
My question comes when I have to generate this Vagrantfile and control all vagrant commands, arguments... from the ansible playbook. I have tried to search an ansible module but they do not exist. I found out that the community made one module for ansible that tries to do the work but it is horrible to understand and it does not seem to work.
Is it possible to execute vagrant from an ansible playbook? Would it be a better idea to generate all vagrant information in the golang module instad of using ansible to do that work?
Thank you!
I am really new to Ansible and I hate getting warnings when I run a playbook. This environment is being used for my education.
Environment:
AWS EC2
4 Ubuntu 20
3 Amazon Linux2 hosts
Inventory
using the dynamic inventory script
playbook
just runs a simple ping against all hosts. I wanted to test the inventory
warning
[WARNING]: Platform linux on host XXXXXX.amazonaws.com is using the discovered Python interpreter at /usr/bin/python, but future installation of another Python interpreter could change the
meaning of that path. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.11/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
Things I have tried
updated all sym links on hosts to point to the python3 version
adding the line "ansible_python_interpreter = /usr/bin/python" to "/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg"
I am relying on that cfg file
I would like to know how to solve this. since I am not running a static inventory, I didn't think that I could specific an interpreter on a per host or group of hosts. While the playbook runs, it seems that something is not configured correctly and I would like to get that sorted. This is only present on the Amazon Linux instances. the Ubuntu instances are fine.
Michael
Thank you. I did find another route that work though I am sure that you suggest would also work.
I was using the wrong configuration entry. I was using
ansible_python_interpreter = /usr/bin/python
when I should have been using
interpreter_python = /usr/bin/python
on each host I made sure that /usr/bin/python sym link was pointing and the correct version.
according to the documentation
for individual hosts and groups, use the ansible_python_interpreter inventory variable
globally, use the interpreter_python key in the [defaults] section of ansible.cfg
Regards, Michael.
You can edit your ansible.cfg and set auto_silent mode:
interpreter_python=auto_silent
Check reference here:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html
I'm developing custom Ansible module to control Vagrant controlled multiple VM nodes on multiple VM servers following guide https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/dev_guide/developing_modules_general.html. As far as I understand, Ansible iterates over all specified target hosts and executes run_module on them, allowing to module.run_command on each host.
But I need some info from inventory file. For example if VM server is passed to Ansible command then I need to get IPs of VM nodes on that server and I could do it using info from inventory file. How could I get full inventory data from Ansible module Python code?
Found answer by myself and posted it as a part of answer to related question https://stackoverflow.com/a/59877713/1927853
I've have seen a gitlab demo about using Infrastructure as code. If I wanted to do the same on-prem, would this work? Setup open-source gitlab on-prem, setup a bash as shell runner, and using the shell runner, execute ansible playbooks on the network equipment?
having written out this answer, I now believe this question is at risk of closure for being either Too Broad or Primarily Opinion Based; but, I already spent the effort to type it out, so here we go.
Setup open-source gitlab on-prem, setup a bash as shell runner, and using the shell runner, execute ansible playbooks on the network equipment?
I believe that's possible, or you can install ansible, along with any required python modules for your playbooks, into a docker image and then use the docker executor to run the playbooks inside a container. Using Tower or AWX is also possible, since they have the concept of projects run from source control
The advantage of using the docker runner is that you don't have to pre-install ansible (along with its dependencies) on every runner host; the disadvantage of using the docker runner is that I could imagine ssh authentication from inside the container getting weird.
# hypothetical .gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
- apply
run ansible playbook:
stage: apply
image: docker.example.com/my-ansible:2.8
scripts:
- ansible-playbook -i ./some-inventory -v playbook.yml
The advantage of using a dedicated system like AWX (or Tower) is that the inventory against which those playbooks run is also a formally managed entity in the system, and wouldn't require teaching GitLab about how to make that available to your playbook. Same story with the authentication, since AWX has first-class support for a managed SSH keypair that can be conditionally granted to only certain playbook projects
You can still have GitLab integrate with Tower by either using tower-cli or their rich API to launch a Job Template that has its Project configured to do an SCM update before launch
I am learning ansible recently and I am a hard time figuring out, how to configure ansible to run the playbooks on its own after a certain interval. ? Just like puppet does.
Ansible works in a different way compared to Puppet.
Puppet PULLS for configuration changes from a central place and applies changes on the remote host that asked for it.
Ansible by design works different. You PUSH the changes (from any control machine that has SSH access to remote hosts - usually your own computer) to remote hosts.
You can make Ansible work in pull mode also but it's not how Ansible was designed to be used.
You can see this answer for more information: Can't run Ansible in daemon-mode
If you would like the host to automatically run playbooks on itself (localhost) you would basically use ansible-pull script + crontab.
If you want to run the playbooks once after a certain interval, you can use the at command.
Example
# Schedule a command to execute in 20 minutes as root.
- at: command="ls -d / > /dev/null" count=20 units="minutes"
Further information available on ansible official site.
This is what Ansible Tower is for. It'll run after being pinged on its API, by schedule, manually, and so on.