MFH LABS : First Ansible Playbook

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Step 01 —

First, create a project folder and add the configuration files for the playbook.

mkdir ansible/cd ansible

Then create a new configuration file host and site.yml.

touch hosts site.yml

Now create a new directory called roles.

mkdir roles/

Step 02 —

Second, generate Ansible roles for the directory structure. For this task we are using a role named myuser. Redirect to the /roles folder.

cd roles/

Now execute the following command to generate the folder structure.

ansible-galaxy init myuseroutput: WARNING: Executing a script that is loading libcrypto in an unsafe way. This will fail in a future version of macOS. Set the LIBRESSL_REDIRECT_STUB_ABORT=1 in the environment to force this into an error.
- Role myuser was created successfully

You will find the following folder structure in your project folder

tree .
.
├── hosts
├── roles
│ └── myuser
│ ├── README.md
│ ├── defaults
│ │ └── main.yml
│ ├── files
│ ├── handlers
│ │ └── main.yml
│ ├── meta
│ │ └── main.yml
│ ├── tasks
│ │ └── main.yml
│ ├── templates
│ ├── tests
│ │ ├── inventory
│ │ └── test.yml
│ └── vars
│ └── main.yml
└── site.yml10 directories, 10 files

Let me talk you on a quick walkthrough around the files we created up to now.

  1. site.yaml — This is the playbook file. This contains the group of hosts that will be managed using the available roles.
  2. hosts — It is an inventory file which contains the details of the managed nodes (IP addresses)
  3. roles — A group of Ansible playbooks used to provision the managed nodes.

Step 03 —

The third part is to set up the hosts and the site.yml file. Open the hosts file and paste the following part. Then save and exit.

[localhost]
localhost

Same, open site.yml file, paste the following part, save and exit.

---
- name: “Play 1”
  hosts: localhost
  roles: 
    — myuser

Step 04 —

Part 04 is to set up the roles. In our case let’s setup myuser role. Open main.ymlin /roles/myuser/tasks. This file is to define the tasks related to the role. The tasks are defined in several methods. For this task, we will make the role to create a folder. Paste the following code to the main.yml and save.

- name: Task 01
  command: mkdir task01/

The tasks can be named as you want with the name: tag.

Step 05 —

The final step is to run the playbook.

ansible-playbook site.yml

If you check your directory structure you will find out the new folder task01.

So, this is all for writing a simple Ansible playbook. Let us get back with a more complex as multiple hosts in next article.

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