Unit 14 Lab - Ansible Automation

If you are unable to finish the lab in the ProLUG lab environment we ask you reboot the machine from the command line so that other students will have the intended environment.

Resources / Important Links

• Ansible Documentation
• Killercoda - Ansible Labs
• HPC_Deploy Repo

Required Materials

• Rocky 9.4+ - ProLUG Lab
  • Or comparable Linux box
• root or sudo command access

Downloads

The lab has been provided for convenience below:

• 📥 u14_lab(.pdf)
• 📥 u14_lab(.docx)

Warmup Exercises

Quickly run through your system and familiarize yourself:

mkdir /root/ansible_madness
cd /root/ansible_madness
dnf whatprovides ansible   # Where is Ansible installed from?
ansible --version          # What version of Ansible is installed?
ansible-<TAB>              # What other ansible-* tools are available?
ansible localhost -m shell -a uptime  # Compare with standalone `uptime`
ansible -vvv localhost -m shell -a uptime  # What extra info does -vvv show?

Lab Exercises

Create an Inventory File

While in /root/ansible_madness, create a file called hosts:

vi /root/ansible_madness/hosts

Add the following contents:

[servers]
192.168.200.101
192.168.200.102
192.168.200.103

Run Ad Hoc Commands

Test connectivity into the servers:

ansible servers -i hosts -u inmate -k -m shell -a uptime

• Use password: LinuxR0cks1!

Verbose version:

ansible -vvv servers -i hosts -u inmate -k -m shell -a uptime

Create a Playbook to Push Files

1. Create a test file:

echo "This is my file <yourname>" > somefile

2. Create deploy.yaml:

---
- name: Start of push playbook
  hosts: servers
  vars:
  gather_facts: True
  become: False
  tasks:
    - name: Copy somefile over at {{ ansible_date_time.iso8601_basic_short }}
      copy:
        src: /root/ansible_madness/somefile
        dest: /tmp/somefile.txt

3. Run the playbook:

ansible-playbook -i hosts -k deploy.yaml

4. Verify the file was pushed everywhere:

ansible servers -i hosts -u inmate -k -m shell -a "ls -l /tmp/somefile"

Pull Down a GitHub Repo

git clone https://github.com/het-tanis/HPC_Deploy.git
cd HPC_Deploy

Then reflect:

• What do you see in here?
• What do you need to learn more about to deploy some of these tools?
• Can you execute some of these? Why or why not?

Be sure to reboot the lab machine from the command line when you are done.