Ansible in a Docker Container

Usage

Entrypoint defaults to ansible. Simply execute it inside the container by appending arguments to docker run.

$ docker run --rm sw00/ansible --version
ansible 2.2.1.0
  config file =
  configured module search path = Default w/o overrides

Override the Docker image's entrypoint to execute other binaries such as ansible-playbook.

$ docker run --rm --entrypoint ansible-playbook sw00/ansible --version
ansible-playbook 2.2.1.0
  config file =
  configured module search path = Default w/o overrides

You can mount the current directory inside the container to utilise playbooks other files.

$ docker run --rm -v `pwd`:/workspace sw00/ansible all -i /workspace/hosts.ini -m ping

Tip

Wrap the tedious commands in shellscripts to make your life easier.

# ansible.sh
#!/bin/sh

docker run --rm -it -v `pwd`:/workspace sw00/ansible $@

Usage: ./ansible.sh all -i inventory.ini --list-hosts

Why?

Fed up with trying to install Ansible on OSX with pip because it fails with the following error:

$ pip install -U ansible
...
    build/temp.macosx-10.11-x86_64-2.7/_openssl.c:434:10: fatal error: 'openssl/opensslv.h' file not found
    #include <openssl/opensslv.h>
             ^
    1 error generated.
    error: command 'clang' failed with exit status 1

Which leads to a whole saga of trying to get Homebrew to link openssl.