My goals for this project are the following

• Understand the basics of Ansible (Inventory, Playbook, Task, Module)
• Create an inventory for my hosts
• Create a playbook
• Variables and templates
• Provision and build proxmox VMs

I started off by downloading Ansible on my desktop which later I can move to a server

╭─hamish@hamish in ~
╰─λ sudo pacman -S ansible
[sudo] password for hamish:
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Package (14)               New Version  Net Change  Download Size

extra/ansible-core         2.21.0-1      24.01 MiB       3.60 MiB
extra/python-bcrypt        5.0.0-2        0.49 MiB       0.20 MiB
extra/python-cffi          2.0.0-2        1.38 MiB       0.28 MiB
extra/python-cryptography  48.0.0-1       6.58 MiB       1.47 MiB
extra/python-fluidity      0.2.1-8        0.05 MiB       0.01 MiB
extra/python-invoke        3.0.3-1        1.05 MiB       0.19 MiB
extra/python-jinja         1:3.1.6-3      2.04 MiB       0.32 MiB
extra/python-lexicon       3.0.0-2        0.03 MiB       0.01 MiB
extra/python-markupsafe    3.0.3-1        0.09 MiB       0.02 MiB
extra/python-paramiko      4.0.0-2        2.37 MiB       0.36 MiB
extra/python-pycparser     3.00-1         0.71 MiB       0.11 MiB
extra/python-pynacl        1.6.2-1        1.01 MiB       0.12 MiB
extra/python-resolvelib    1.2.1-2        0.19 MiB       0.04 MiB
extra/ansible              13.7.0-1     559.39 MiB      41.48 MiB

Total Download Size:    48.23 MiB
Total Installed Size:  599.40 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y

I also created a github repo to keep my playbooks on.

https://github.com/IWantSome314/ansible-playbook

This will be used to store my playbooks so I can move it to a VM once I think its worth to do so.

I have created a inventory.yml to set my hosts in that I will use my ansible playbooks on

I aswell have created a vault to keep secrets in ansible-vault create group_vars/all/vault.yml and aswell as a gitignore just cause I dont want my vault file even tho encrypted to be on my git repo.

╭─hamish@hamish in repo: ansible-playbook on  main [?] took 0s
╰─λ ls
drwxr-xr-x   - hamish 24 May 21:57  .git
drwxr-xr-x   - hamish 24 May 22:40  group_vars
.rw-r--r--  54 hamish 24 May 22:13 󱁻 ansible.cfg
.rw-r--r--  25 hamish 24 May 22:39 󰡯 gitginore
.rw-r--r-- 239 hamish 24 May 22:36  inventory.yml
.rw-r--r--  56 hamish 24 May 21:32  readme.md

╭─hamish@hamish in repo: ansible-playbook on  main [?] took 0s
╰─λ ls group_vars/all/
.rw------- 808 hamish 24 May 22:41  vault.yml

╭─hamish@hamish in repo: ansible-playbook on  main [?] took 0s
╰─λ

I started to create an inventory with a few of my already exsisting VMs. And just tested a ping

all:
  children:
    management:
      hosts:
        slt-01:
        k3s-man-01:
    k3s:
      hosts:
        k3s-man-01:
        k3s-wrk-01:
        k3s-wrk-02:

╰─λ ansible all -m ping -i inventory.yml
Vault password:
[WARNING]: Host 'k3s-wrk-02' is using the discovered Python interpreter at '/usr/bin/python3.12', but future installation of another Python interpreter could cause a different interpreter to be discovered. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.21/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
k3s-wrk-02 | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3.12"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
[WARNING]: Host 'k3s-wrk-01' is using the discovered Python interpreter at '/usr/bin/python3.12', but future installation of another Python interpreter could cause a different interpreter to be discovered. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.21/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
k3s-wrk-01 | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3.12"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
[WARNING]: Host 'k3s-man-01' is using the discovered Python interpreter at '/usr/bin/python3.12', but future installation of another Python interpreter could cause a different interpreter to be discovered. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.21/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
k3s-man-01 | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3.12"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
[WARNING]: Host 'slt-01' is using the discovered Python interpreter at '/usr/bin/python3.12', but future installation of another Python interpreter could cause a different interpreter to bediscovered. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.21/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
slt-01 | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3.12"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}

I then wanted to set some vars for a base user and port to use so I created a vault to store my secrets in.

ansible-vault create group_vars/all/vault.yml

I then called my set secrets/vars in my inventory

all:
  vars:
    ansible_user: "{{ vault_ansible_user }}"
    ansible_port: "{{ vault_ansible_port }}"
  children:
    management:
      hosts:
        slt-01:
        k3s-man-01:
    k3s:
      hosts:
        k3s-man-01:
        k3s-wrk-01:
        k3s-wrk-02:

I have no gone through and added most of my servers. Ones that I want managed maybe Ill add the rest later depending how far I take ansible.

Since ansible works agentless. I will need to set up my ssh key onto my servers for the my ansible user. I am creating a playbook that will do this but it wont work till I do it manually first anyway but my reason for doing this is because later I can change this playbook to a SSH key from my desktop to the each of the servers onces I make a vm to use my ansible host.

I made a folder /playbooks which if it isnt obvious is where I will store my playbooks. Maybe I will organise later if needed but for now Ive created a file called ssh_key.yml

---
- name: Push ssh keys to hosts
  hosts: all # Specifying the hosts in this case everything
  become: true # Become true escalates the script/process/task or what ever as a privileged user /root

  tasks:
    - name: create .ssh dir if needed
      file: # Ansible builtin module to specify we are working with a file or later specified a directory. Using this it checks if the file exists if so theres nothing to do if not then it will create the file
        path: /home/{{ vault_ansible_user }}/.ssh # Specify the directory we are checking
        state: directory # Specifies the expected state of the target
        mode: '0700'
        owner: "{{ vault_ansible_user }}"
        group: "{{ vault_ansible_user }}"

    - name: Push ssh keys
      authorized_key: # Ansible ssh key module
        user: "{{ vault_ansible_user }}"
        state: present # Stating we want the key to be present for mentioned user
        key: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub') }}" # Setting the source/location of the key