In this post, we will cover how to install latest version of Ansible on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) and 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa).
Ansible is a free and open-source IT Automation and configuration tool. It is available for almost all the Linux distributions and can be used to manage Linux and Windows systems. Now a days, Ansible is also used to manage EC2 instances in AWS, Virtual machines, and containers etc. It does not require any agent on managed hosts, but it only requires ssh connection.
Prerequisites
- Minimal Installed Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04
- Regular user with sudo privileges
- 2 CPU / vCPU
- 2 GB RAM or more
- 20 GB Hard drive
- Internet Connection (In case you don’t have local configured apt repository server)
Following is my lab setup details for ansible demonstration.
- Ansible Control Node – control.example.com (192.168.1.192)
- Ansible Managed Nodes – node1.example.com & node2.example.com
- sysops sudo user on control and managed nodes with privileges.
Note: Here node1 is a Ubuntu System and node2 is a fedora system and control node is the system where we will install ansible. I am assuming sysops is already created on each host.
To configure sudo user (sysops) to run all the commands without prompting for the password then run the following echo and tee command on each managed host
$ echo "sysops ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/sysops
Let’s jump into the Installation steps of Ansible
Step 1) Apply Updates on Control Node
Login to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / 21.04 system and run below apt commands to apply updates.
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt upgrade -y
Once all the updates are installed then reboot the system once, run
$ sudo reboot
Step 2) Enable Ansible PPA Repository
Ansible package and it’s dependencies are available in the default package repositories of Ubuntu 22.04/20.04, but it is not latest Ansible version. So, to install latest and stable ansible, enable its ppa repository, run following commands,
$ sudo apt install -y software-properties-common $ sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
Now update repository by running beneath apt command.
$ sudo apt update
Step 3) Install latest version of ansible
Now, we are ready to install latest version of Ansible on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / 21.04, run following apt command.
$ sudo apt install -y ansible
After the successful installation of Ansible, verify its version by executing the command
$ ansible --version
Great, above output confirms that Ansible version 2.13 is installed.
Step 4) Setup SSH keys and share it among managed nodes
Configure password-less ssh authentication for sysops user. Generate the SSH keys for sysops user from the control node and share it among managed hosts. Run ssh-keygen command,
$ ssh-keygen
Hit enter when prompting for the input, output is shown below
Note : Add managed host entries in /etc/hosts file on control node. This is only required when you don’t have local DNS server configured.
192.168.1.200 node1.example.com 192.168.1.77 node2.example.com
To share the ssh keys between control to managed hosts, run ssh-copy-id command example is shown below
$ ssh-copy-id node1.example.com $ ssh-copy-id node2.example.com
Output of above commands would look like below
Step 5) Create ansible cfg and inventory file
It is always recommended to have separate ansible.cfg and inventory file for each project. For the demonstration purpose, I am using demo as the project name. So, create the project folder first by running mkdir command.
$ mkdir demo
Download sample ansble.cfg file to ~/demo folder using following wget command
$ cd demo $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/stable-2.9/examples/ansible.cfg
Edit the ~/demo/ansible.cfg file, set the following parameters,
$ vi ~/demo/ansible.cfg
Under the default sections
inventory = /home/sysops/demo/inventory remote_user = sysops host_key_checking = False
Under the privilege_escalation section
become=True become_method=sudo become_user=root become_ask_pass=False
Save and close the file. Now, let’s create the inventory file that we have defined in ~/demo/ansible.cfg file.
$ vi ~/demo/inventory [dev] node2.example.com [prod] node1.example.com
save and exit the file
Re-run ansible --version command to verify that new config file is set
$ cd demo/ $ ansible --version
Great, ansible is now reading our project’s ansible configuration file. Let’s verify the managed nodes connectivity using ansible ad-hoc command,
$ ansible all -m ping
Note : Make sure run ansible command from demo folder.
Output of command would look like below:
This output confirms that connectivity is in place from control node to managed hosts.
Step 6) Create a Demo Ansible playbook
To verify the ansible installation and configuration, let’s create a sample playbook named as packages.yaml under demo folder. This playbook will install packages on managed nodes.
$ vi packages.yaml --- - name: Playbook to Install Packages hosts: - dev - prod tasks: - name: Install php and mariadb package: name: - php - mariadb-server state: present
save and Close the file
Now run the playbook using ansible-playbook command,
$ ansible-playbook packages.yaml
Output:
Above output confirms that playbook has been executed successfully. To verify result, run following ad-hoc commands,
$ ansible dev -m shell -a 'dpkg -l | grep -E "php|mariadb"' $ ansible prod -m shell -a 'rpm -qa | grep -E "php|mariadb"'
That’s all from this post, in case you have found it informative then please do not hesitate to share it. Kindly do post queries and feedback in below comments section.
Read Also : How to Use Handlers in Ansible Playbook
A great manual, thank you.
How to use Ansible for the Windows platform? For example, how to install IIS remotely?
Is it possible to change IP address remotely by using Ansible?
Hi Alexey,
To manage Windows system using Ansible, please refer the below URL:
https://www.linuxtechi.com/manage-windows-host-using-ansible/