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README.md

Ansible Sysadmin Automation

Ansible is an agentless IT automation system for configuration, deployment and orchestration, written in Python. Ansible Galaxy is a community site for sharing roles; you can also run a self-hosted private version.

The latest version is 2.18 as of 2024-11.

As with most systems of this type, update scripts should be idempotent, but it's left to the developer to ensure that this is the case. Configurable generic scripts (e.g., from Galaxy) may or may not do a good job of this.

Overview

At an interactive login on the control node you download, clone and/or otherwise arrange access to configuration information that includes the inventory (list of managed nodes and their descriptions) and playbooks (containing tasks and roles, the policy and process descriptions). Files are usually read as YAML. Some information may be encrypted at rest with Vault.

At this point you can run Ansible ad-hoc commands or playbooks on hosts and groups from the inventory. Ansible will connect to the managed nodes, transfer across any content that it needs (including scripts) and run commands as necessary. Nothing is left running or left behind on the managed node once the commands have completed.

Control node requirements:

  • Non-dedicated system (often a personal laptop).
  • Unix-like (Windows not supported).
  • Python 2.7 or ≥3.5.
  • Ansible installed via pip, OS package manager, or run from a clone of the GitHub repository.
  • Means of logging in to the managed nodes without interactive authentication.

Managed node requirements:

  • Python 2.7 or ≥3.5. Default path is /usr/bin/python; can be set with ansible-python-interpreter. Not needed for the raw module or script module.
  • Running SSH server (also SFTP enabled?) or WinRM if using those.
  • If SELinux is enabled, libselinux-python to use copy/file/template functions. (Can be installed via Ansible, e.g. yum module.)

Connecting to Managed Nodes

Inventory settings determine how to connect to the managed node. The connector is chosen via the ansible_connection variable. Values and additional variables to configure that are spread throughout the documentation. Connectors include:

  • local: run commands locally (control node is also managed node).
  • ssh: OpenSSH client (normally uses ControlPersist).
  • paramiko: Python SSH client
  • docker: Docker.
  • HTTP requests to to WinRM server.

Installation

Full details are in the Installation Guide.

To install via pip, set up virtualenv if necessary and then whatever you need of:

pip install paramiko        # If using `paramiko` connection plugin.
pip install ansible
pip install git+https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git@devel

For working from source, pip must be available, then:

git clone https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git
cd ./ansible
git submodule update --init --recursive
source ./hacking/env-setup      # Bash; -q available
export ANSIBLE_INVENTORY=.../ansible_hosts