ansible

Ansible Notes

These notes cover how we use Ansible to provision, configure, and administer the picoCTF platform.

The goal is that nothing should have to be done as a one off on the command line. Every dependency, configuration, or process should be documented in code or a configuration and then applied using Ansible.

This automation drastically simplifies the process of getting blank machines to run the picoCTF platform. By using the same playbooks across the board we achieve a robust, repeatable, and consistent experience across development and production. Additionally this allows the picoCTF platform to be deployed in a wide variety of configurations with minor configuration changes.

Tags

Tags are a convenient way of only running some tasks from the overall playbook. Some common tags:

• dependency: runs dependencies
• sync: syncs source code (also triggered on relevant sub tasks)
• web: full installation and configuration of the picoCTF-web stack
  • web-api: minimal update of just the API
  • web-static: minimal update of just the static web resources
• shell: full installation and configuration of the picoCTF-web stack
  • shell-api: minimal update of just shell_manager/hacksport
  • deploy-all: install and deploy all configured challenges
• nginx: update the nginx configuration including HTTPS state

Tags + Playbooks

A more complex example of using a tag is redeploy-one as found in pico-shell/tasks and triggering redeploy_single_challenge.yml. These tasks require additional variables be passed (slug and problem_dir). A full invocation would look like:

export SLUG=docker-world-867a1ac
export PD=/picoCTF/problems/examples/on-demand/minimal/
ansible-playbook site.yml --tags redeploy-one -e slug=$SLUG -e problem_dir=$PD

Note once you have exported the variables once, you can simply keep re-running the final line as you develop your challenge.

Next Steps

As you perform administrative tasks consider writing and integrating some ansible tasks/playbooks to make your setup more automated.