Ansible is an automation platform that can be used for provisioning, configuration management, and deployments. It does not require deploying an agent and is suitable to manage any system that allows SSH connections and can run Python 2.7.

Ansible is very powerful for fleet management. Currently, many IT organizations espouse a “cattle not pets” or “stamps not snowflakes” mode of managing in their IT. If your servers are pets, you lovingly create each one by hand, tweaking and tuning it to its specific purpose. This is fine if you have 10 servers but does not scale well. If your servers are cattle, you can create them by the dozen, with the idea that you manage each system identically with common policies.

For managing your own personal LEBs, Ansible can accomplish several things:

1. Taking the drudgery out of common setup tasks, such as installing packages, tweaking config files, installing creature comforts in dot-files, setting up software, etc.
2. Enforcing policies so that systems don’t “drift” from your standard configs.
3. Automating routine tasks such as updating systems, deploying new software, etc.

This tutorial will not attempt to cover everything that Ansible can do, but rather show you how you can quickly make managing your LowEndEmpire more pleasant.

In part one, we’re going to introduce some Ansible concepts and get Ansible setup on your control node (the master).  In the next tutorial we’ll use Ansible to manage some hosts.

Ansible Terminology

Control Node: the host that serves as a master, dispatching tasks to other hosts (or itself)

Host (or node): a remote machine that Ansible manages

Roles: you will assign roles to a host or group of hosts, such as “webserver” or “database server” to manage them. A host can have many roles.

Playbooks: these contain a list of plays (think sports), which are rules that say “run these tasks on these hosts”. A task in this context can be something like “update packages” or “copy this file”. Typically you’ll run a playbook, which says “for this group of hosts, run these sets of tasks”.

The Name Ansible Itself: Science fiction author Ursula LeGuin created the word “ansible” to describe a means of high-tech superliminal communication equipment, where messages can be exchanged nearly instantly even over interstellar distances.

There are many more terms but these are enough to get us started.

Setting Up An Ansible Control Node

In this tutorial, we have a control node called master, and a target called (wait for it…) target. Both are going to run Debian 10, but of course Ansible can run on many operating systems.

First, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list so you pick up the Ansible repo:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu trusty main

Then run these commands as root:

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 93C4A3FD7BB9C367
apt update
apt install ansible

Setting Up An Ansible SSH Key

Since everything Ansible does is done over ssh, we’ll want to create an ssh key. You can either generate a passwordless ssh key or use ssh-agent.

In this example, I’m running my control node from a secure location – my home, safe behind a NAT’d firewall – so I’ll be using passwordless ssh.

If your control node is in the cloud, you may not want to use a passwordless ssh key because if your control node is compromised, then all of the nodes that ansible controls could be compromised as well. In that configuration, an ssh-agent setup where you need to enter a password to kick off Ansible may be preferable.

To generate an passwordless ssh-key, issue the following command, answering with a return when prompted for no password:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/ansible-key -C 'ssh key for ansible'

Setting Up the Ansible Target Node(s)

There’s no software to install, but you do need to setup the ssh key. Some VPS providers allow you to run a script as part of your setup. If so, putting your Ansible ssh key into root’s authorized_keys is easy to go. If your provider doesn’t offer this functionality, then you’ll need to setup the SSH key manually.

Here is a script that can be used to ensure that the Ansible key is setup properly. You can either run it as a setup script in your provider’s provisioning, or you can copy it to your target node and run it there. You could even login to your target node, copy/paste this script to a file in /tmp, and then execute it. Be sure to change the SSH key (where it says YOUR SSH PUBLIC KEY) to match your control node’s public key.

#!/bin/bash
set -e # will exit on any error
[ ! -d /root/.ssh] && mkdir /root/.ssh
[ ! -f /root/.ssh/authorized_keys] && touch /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
echo "YOUR SSH PUBLIC KEY" >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown root:root /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown root:root /root/.ssh
chmod 700 /root/.ssh
echo "Ansible ssh key setup successfully"

Setting Up Inventory

We need to give Ansible a list of hosts to manage. We can also use list this to define groups.

In this case, ‘target’ is going to be a database host. So we’ll edit /etc/ansible/hosts to create a ‘db’ group and put ‘target’ into it:

[db]
target.example.com

Look at the examples (commented out) in /etc/ansible/hosts to get a feel for how you can group hosts and specify them.

Setting Up ansible.cfg

You’ll want to modify /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg (the main Ansible options file). If you use the default Ansible file locations, you’ll have less to modify, so here I will just call out some options to consider.

If you’ve changed the SSH port on your target hosts, you can use the remote_port setting to change this. For example, if you use port 32222, change this line in the [defaults] group:

remote_port = 61941

You may wish to disable host key checking, otherwise you’ll need to either use ssh-keyscan to add new hosts to your control node’s known_hosts or manually answer ‘Y’ the first time a playbook is run:

host_key_checking = False

Finally, you need to tell Ansible which private key to use, so be sure to set this option:

private_key_file = /root/.ssh/ansible-key

Setting Up an Ansible Working Directory

You’ll want on a work area on your control node for ansible, where you can:

• keep playbooks and plays
• keep various source files you want to distribute to your target nodes. For example, you might have a vimrc.local you want to always have on your hosts. To do this, create a directory that will hold all your source files. It can be anywhere you wish.

In this tutorial, we’ll keep it simple and call the work directory /ansible, and keep any files we want to distribute in /ansible/src

mkdir -p /ansible/src

Next Time

Now that we’ve got Ansible setup, we’ll show you how to exploit its capabilities in the next tutorial.

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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