AnsiblePilot

Cockpit plugin to run Ansible playbooks inside Podman containers.

This cockpit plugin gives the ability to run Ansible playbooks in (or not) a Podman container. The idea was to get some of the features of AWX but none of the bloat.

Installation

• Use the included Ansible playbook to install: ansible-playbook install-plugin.yml
• OR - copy the AnsiblePilotPlugin directory to /usr/share/cockpit/AnsiblePilotPluguin

Usage

Requirements

• Cockpit
• Podman (optional if not using containers)
• Ansible (optional if only running playbooks in containers)

Assumptions

• Looks for .yml or .yaml files in /opt/playbooks
  • Gives the option to change this directory for the current run
  • Can be changed permanently by changing the code
• Looks for container images that have the label ansible_execution_environment
  • That means you have to build your own image and bake that label in
  • This gives the flexibility to assign any mounts/ports/etc you need
  • Sample containerfile, using CentOS Stream 9 and /opt/playbooks for a mount can be found in docs/ansible_execution_environment
• Gives the ability to add extra Ansible parameters at run-time with or without using containers
• Workflow has only been tested as a user with sudo rights, unprivileged containers are the ultimate goal

Usage Video

Architecture

This plugin was built using the Cockpit Starter Kit project. To build your own, the files in src must be put into the corresponding folder within the starter-kit. The plugin itself then is generated using a make command in the starter-kit directory. More details on this process are on the starter-kit project page.