Ansible on CTRL-Find

Advanced Ansible: Collections+

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A set of modules together is a called a collection. Like ansible.builtin. I’ve used collections in the past to use the modules it provided but never really created them. In this post I want to take you on my journery to learn more about these collections.

To create a collection we need to do the following:

ansible-galaxy collection init <namespace name>.<collection name>

# EXAMPLE:
ansible-galaxy collection init local.random

This will build the scaffold collection.

Advanced Ansible: Custom modules

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is my first time trying to create a Ansible custom module. I dont have much python knowledge (the very bare minimum), but I want to expand my knowledge of python and Ansible by creating a custom module.

What do we need?

Installed:
- Ansible
- Python3
- virtual environment for python3 packages
A folder to place our files

Starting with the module

Activate the virtual environment and create a folder called library. Ansible knows that if there is a custom module its in the library folder. In this library folder we can create our python file, I’ve called mine pokemon_api.py

Testing Ansible code

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What is Ansible Molecule

Ansible Molecule is created for development and testing of Ansible roles and collections. Through Molecule it is possible to test against different OS versions or complete new systems.

prerequisites to local use Molecule:

Podman of docker installation
Locally installed ansible
Python3
A python virtual environment

Installation

There are different ways of installing Ansible Molecule see this url. I Chose the pip way with python3 -m pip install molecule ansible-core. Whether we choose docker or podman we need to install the molecule connector, I personally use podman so thats pip install molecule-podman

Ansible secrets

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ansible-vault?!

Always wondered how to use ansible with sensitive information like secrets,files,variables or configurations? Thats where ansible-vault comes to play, this is a way to encrypt the data with a password.

There are two ways to use ansible-vault, with cli parameters or use a password file. We will explorer both options below.

How to use the CLI parameters

The CLI parameters variant asks for a password that you want to use for en/decrypt or view the encrypted content. I have created a file named in /Users/sebas/Desktop/ansible/supersecret.yml with the following content in it:

Creating Ansible Roles

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why Roles over Playbooks?

Single playbooks are great for tasks but when a project starts getting complexer, it way more managable in a role then a single playbook. Ansible role is a predefined set of playbooks that is build for a specific purpose. All the necessary configurations can be set and build into the role.

Creating the role

We create the role in the folder we’ve been using in the previous parts /Users/sebas/Desktop/ansible. With following command we can create a pre-setup role through ansible.

Creating Ansible Playbooks

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why Playbooks over ADHOC commands

ADHOC commands are great for short and quick informational actions but when you want to to get more information or configuration from a group.
Then is one command at a time a really time consuming action, this is where playbooks shine.
Why are playbook better then adhoc commands?, there is more predictablity on playbooks and less manual work on it.

A playbook is a repeatable script that we can run over and over again, with the same result. In these playbooks we can specify precise actions what we want to do and in which order.

Managing Hosts with Ansible

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What do we need?

There are a few things we need to start with managing hosts with ansible.

SSH keys
Place to store our files
Inventory file

Creating SSH key

To manage hosts, we need to use a SSH key. We can create them with the following command: ssh-keygen -t ed25519. Choose where the SSH files needs to be placed and if you want to use a password or not (much more secure if you do).

Ansible? what is that!

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ansible is a configuration management tool that can be used for configuring servers, clients and network equipment.
The basic way of using this tool is through SSH, utilizing passwords or preferably SSH keys.
In this series we will be using Ansible for configuring a server through the following options;

ansible-commands: Execute single command on a host
ansible-playbooks": Run repeatable script(s) on a host
ansible-roles: Organize and reuse code for configurations tasks

There is a newer version called ansible-navigator that’s for another post, for now lets stick to the current version called ansible.