Common Ansible Role

This role does two things. Firstly, it installs a few packages that are required to run some essential Ansible modules, but are sometimes absent from managed nodes. Secondly it manages, and can create, the agent user (ansible_user). The role can not bootstrap a host on its own though. If used to create the permanent ansible_user it requires a privileged "bootstrap" user (which can optionally be removed as part of this role) and a python executable on the target machine.

Requirements

A version of Python that Ansible can use.

Role Variables

Name	Required	Type / Choices	Description
common_agent_user_name	no	string	Name of the managed user. During normal operations this should be the same as the ansible_user for the host. Default: "ansible"
common_agent_user_home	no	path	Home directory of the managed user. Default: "/var/ansible"
common_agent_user_shell	no	path	Login shell for the managed user. Default: "/bin/bash"
common_agent_user_create_local	no	boolean	Use the local option during user creation. This requires the luseradd command to be present on the target host. This role will install this command if possible, but some Linux distributions (eg. ArchLinux) do not have an install target for the luseradd executable in their package sources. Default: false
common_bootstrap_user_name	no	string	Name of a dedicated bootstrap user that WILL BE REMOVED as part of this role. This variable has no effect if the given user does not exist on the system. The idea is, that during the bootstrapping process ansible can log in to the new target host using a throwaway user that is set up with unsave credentials during system installation. This role will than create the permanent agent user, switch over to that new user for the rest of the play, and then, finally, remove the temporary user. Default: "ansible_bootstrap"
common_remove_unused_sshd	no	boolean	Remove the openssh-server package if the ansible connection does not require it. This is option is currently only considered for the lxd connection type. Default: true
common_configure_connection	no	`"lxd"`, `"ssh"`	By default this role will do some custom configuration (if applicable) for the connection type used during the playbook run. If another connection plugin should be configured instead, this variable can be used to overwrite it. Default: {{ ansible_connection }}

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbooks

- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - ansible.builtin.import_role:
        name: gliech.common

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0