joe-speedboat.os_update

This role will aply security or full patching to Red Hat, Ubuntu and Alpine machines.

It can do

• security or full patching
• cleanup old kernel versions
• detect needed reboots and boot them (see vars)

Since I only work with AWX (v20.0.1), it is only tested with its (latest) ansible versions.

Requirements

Working internet and proper repository configuration on machines.

Supported Operating Systems:

• RHEL, CentOS, Rocky, Alma

  • Version: 6-9

• Ubuntu LTS: 20.04 22.04, 24.04

• Alpine: stable-latest

• Debain should work, I only use LTS distributions, which can have SLA.

• Mint works, but has no focus (personal needs)

Breaking Changes

• The os_update_reboot variable has been updated. Old boolean values (True|False) are no longer supported and should be replaced with the new string values (allow|deny|force).
• however, at the moment we catch them up and migrate them:
  • True => allow
  • False => deny

Role Variables

• gather_facts is turned off, due we need to decide if host is online first.
  we do this multiple times, to avoid load and connectivity issues.
  please look into tests folder.

Most variables have varname_default equivalent, which is meant to be used for overriding the default at playbook level.
So you can define the default behavior for all targets that have no variables defined at all. eg: full|security patching.

Let's make an example:

• default os_update_reboot in defaults/main.yml is set to True
• in playbook, you define os_update_reboot_default with False
• in inventory, you have set os_update_reboot to True for your hostgroup testing So all your host will avoid reboot after patching, except your hostgroup testing .... voilà, clever, isn't it?

Remind: varname is always enforcing, varname_default is just overriding the roles default behavior.

• os_update_level: security
  os_update_level: [none|security|full]

• os_update_reboot: allow
  os_update_reboot: [allow|deny|force]

• os_update_remove_old_kernel: true
  os_update_remove_old_kernel: [true|false]

• os_update_keep_kernel_nr: 2

Dependencies

None so far.

Example Playbook

check test dir for examples

License

GPLv3