ansible playbooks

how to use

Prep

1. Create a hosts inventory file with your server hostname if you don't have one. For this example, we've created ~/ansible/hosts and the contents of the file is shown below. The name that goes inside of the square brackets is what ansible will look for when you refer to a host by name. The line below the square brackets is what you name your host inside of your ~/.ssh/config file.

[hostname_recognized_by_ansible]
name_that_you_use_inside_of_your_ssh_config_file

2. add environment variable to your .bashrc file: export ANSIBLE_HOSTS=~/ansible/hosts. For more info on how to configure your hosts inventory, see this: https://valdhaus.co/writings/ansible-post-install/

3. copy the role subdirectory of this repo inside of your ~/ansible directory. Your ~/ansible directory should now contain a hosts file and a roles subdirectory.

using roles

1. create an run.yml file inside of your ~/ansible directory.

2. A role is called inside of a playbook and the playbook is run. As a example, we will call the create_new_user role inside of the run.yml playbook. Your run.yml should look the same as below.

---
- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: login_user
  sudo: true
  vars:
    default_user: login_user
    new_user: deploy
  roles:
    - create_new_user

3. The content that follows the hosts: label is the hostname you used inside of your hosts inventory file. The remote_user: is the user you will ssh into your instance with. sudo: is true because you need sudo privilege to create a new user. vars: are the variables that are needed inside of the role, for this case, default_user: is the user we use to ssh in and new_user: is the name of the user we wish to create. roles: is the role we wish to include in this play.

4. Run the run.yml playbook by typing in ansible-playbook run.yml on your command line.

5. To include multiple roles inside of your playbook, configure your run.yml to what is shown below.

---
- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: login_user
  sudo: true
  vars:
    default_user: login_user
    new_user: deploy
  roles:
    - create_new_user

- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: deploy
  sudo: true
  roles:
    - install_dependencies

- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: deploy
  sudo: false
  roles:
    - install_ruby_rvm

- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: deploy
  sudo: true
  vars:
    user: deploy
    password: password
    app_db: app_db
  roles:
    - install_postgresql

- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: deploy
  sudo: true
  roles:
    - install_nginx

- hosts: hostname_recognized_by_ansible
  remote_user: deploy
  sudo: true
  roles:
    - install_rails_dependencies