ansible

The Ansible documentation on variable precedence summarizes this nicely: If multiple variables of the same name are defined in different places, they win in a certain order, which is: extra vars (-e in the command line) always win then comes connection variables defined in inventory (ansible_ssh_user, etc) then comes “most everything else” (command line switches, … Read more

You can use the lineinfile built-in in a loop. Here’s an example: – name: Set some kernel parameters   lineinfile:     dest: /etc/sysctl.conf     regexp: “{{ item.regexp }}”     line: “{{ item.line }}”   loop:     – { regexp: ‘^kernel.shmall’, line: ‘kernel.shmall = 2097152’ }     – { regexp: ‘^kernel.shmmax’, line: ‘kernel.shmmax = 134217728’ } … Read more

I stumbled upon this error running ansible on Ubuntu 15.10 server, because it ships with Python 3.4.3 and ansible requires Python 2. This is how my provision.yml looks now: – hosts: my_app sudo: yes remote_user: root gather_facts: no pre_tasks: – name: ‘install python2’ raw: sudo apt-get -y install python tasks: – name: ‘ensure user {{ … Read more

You should use tags: as documented in https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_tags.html If you have a large playbook it may become useful to be able to run a specific part of the configuration without running the whole playbook. Both plays and tasks support a “tags:” attribute for this reason. Example: tasks: – yum: name={{ item }} state=installed with_items: – … Read more

Turns out it is possible to enter a host name directly into the playbook, so running the playbook with hosts: imac-2.local will work fine. But it’s kind of clunky. A better solution might be defining the playbook’s hosts using a variable, then passing in a specific host address via –extra-vars: # file: user.yml (playbook) — … Read more

The docs strongly recommend against setting the sudo password in plaintext: As a reminder passwords should never be stored in plain text. For information on encrypting your passwords and other secrets with Ansible Vault, see Encrypting content with Ansible Vault. Instead you should be using –ask-become-pass on the command line when running ansible-playbook Previous versions … Read more