Ansible playbooks

Highly reusable Ansible automation playbooks.

Tested with production servers and personal laptops / computers.

No configuration steps are needed in order to start using this software.

In action

I recently got notified from Nagios that one of my servers has security package updates. Here is how I have upgraded and tested it later:

What is Ansible?

Ansible is servers/computers automation system which saves your day from repeatable tasks.

It is useful even if you do not have number of servers/computers to administrate.

This repo gives you ability to reuse already created playbooks, extend and use for repeatable installation and configuration processes.

How to start?

You need two things:

• Install Ansible on your computer. Nothing to install on servers.
• Learn how to execute playbooks.

Both explained below.

Ansible playbook example

---
- hosts: local
  tasks:
    - name: Upgrade all packages to the latest version
      apt:
        update_cache: yes
        upgrade: yes
    - name: Remove useless packages from the cache
      apt:
        autoclean: yes
    - name: Remove dependencies that are no longer required
      apt:
        autoremove: yes
...

Installing Ansible

You can install it with:

$ sudo apt-get install ansible   # if you are on Ubuntu
$ sudo aptitude install ansible  # if you are on Debian
$ sudo yum install ansible       # if you are on Centos
$ sudo dnf install ansible       # if you are on Fedora
$ sudo brew install ansible      # if you are in Starbucks

Running with Ansible

Check uptime for all servers you have:

ansible all -m command -a uptime

Limit your command to only some hosts:

ansible-playbook playbooks/docker.yml --limit "server.example.org"

Running playbooks

There are many playbooks in this repo (see playbooks/ folder).

Playbook is domain specific configuration file (the one which ends in .yml extension) which you can run on single/multiple machines.

Let's say I am starting with new dedicated server. Obviously, I need my personal home files there. Here is what I would run:

$ ansible-playbook -i 123.123.123.123, dotfiles.yml

Explanation:

• -i IP, - apply playbook to single server only (comma is a must!)
• dotfiles.yml - playbook to run (all playbooks documented below)

Python dependency

As you might already know - Ansible needs Python 2.7. For this reason running playbooks on recent Ubuntu servers won't work.

Run following playbook for the first time and everything will be up and running for your future playbooks:

$ ansible-playbook -i 123.123.123.123, python.yml

Playbooks included

File name	Description
locales.yml	Install default locale to fix terminal from warnings
upgrade.yml	Upgrade server software.
apache.yml	Install apache; configure to support PHP, Ruby and Python projects.
dotfiles.yml	Install dotfiles (see ReekenX/dotfiles repo) with highly reusable configs.
monitoring.yml	Install packages for networking and CPU usage monitoring.
development.yml	Install packages usually used in by engineers (git, rg, neovim, etc.)
ruby_dev.yml	Install packages every Ruby developer uses.
python_dev.yml	Install packages every Python developer uses.
php_dev.yml	Install packages every PHP developer uses.
javascript_dev.yml	Install packages every JavaScript developer uses. Not finished yet.
docker.yml	Install and configure Docker.
pil.yml	Install and configure Python Imaging library (PIL).
apport_errors.yml	Disable apport which gives modal about GUI errors.
backups.yml	Daily backups to Dropbox automatically. Includes custom conf for every machine.
nagios-nrpe.yml	NRPE server configuration, setup and plugins install.

Contribution

I love receiving PRs. File new branch, change / add something and leave me a note.

Leave your feedback, suggestions, PRs: https://github.com/ReekenX/ansible-playbooks/issues