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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Automating setup with ansible-pull part-1"
+date: 2019-03-07
+lastmod: 2020-07-12
+tags: ['ansible','ansible-pull', 'linux', 'fedora']
+---
+
+Every time that I do a clean install on my machine it takes a few hours till I
+get to point where I was before formatting it, install all packages, select
+themes, icons, fonts, install IDEs, extensions and so on. After doing it a few
+times I came to the conclusion that I would save time by spending time
+automating this chore, and as a result, I could toy a little more with my
+system and not worry about spending a weekend re-installing everything (which
+have happened more time that I\'d like to remember).
+
+\<!--more-->
+
+So after a few attempts using python and bash I ended with many files and keep
+everything organized and concise turned out to be more tedious than the setup
+itself. So there comes [Ansible](https://www.ansible.com/). It is an
+enterprise-graded software used to automate tasks. It has A LOT OF features and
+it can be really helpful if you\'re a sysadmin but for now we\'re going to
+focus on [Ansible
+Pull](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_intro.html#ansible-pull)
+and
+[Playbooks](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks.html).
+As better described:
+
+> \[Ansible-Pull\] is used to up a remote copy of ansible on each
+> managed node, each set to run via cron and update playbook source via
+> a source repository. This inverts the default push architecture of
+> Ansible into a pull architecture, which has near-limitless scaling
+> potential.
+>
+> Playbooks are Ansible's configuration, deployment, and orchestration
+> language. They can describe a policy you want your remote systems to
+> enforce, or a set of steps in a general IT process.
+>
+> [source](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/cli/ansible-pull.html)
+
+The goal is to pull and run a playbook remotely using a git repository.
+The playbook will describe the tasks needed to setup our machine from
+scratch.
+
+But first lets toy a bit a with playbooks locally with `ansible-playbook`, to
+do so we need to add `localhost` to ansible's hosts list. Add it to
+ `/etc/ansible/hosts`:
+
+``` service
+[all]
+localhost
+```
+
+As an experiment we\'re going to write a asks to install vim. Currently, I\'m
+using [Fedora](https://getfedora.org/) thus we going to use [dnf
+modeule](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/dnf_module.html) to
+install packages, but if you\'re using another distribution look for a
+equivalent module like [apt
+module](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/apt_module.html) for
+[Ubuntu](https://ubuntu.com/).
+
+The playbook to install is quite straightforward:
+
+``` yaml
+# main.yaml
+- hosts: all
+ tasks:
+ - name: install vim
+ dnf:
+ name: vim
+ state: latest
+```
+
+`hosts:` is required and it has to match our hosts otherwise the
+playbook won\'t run.
+
+`tasks:` is the list of tasks that the playbook will perform, in this
+case will be `dnf install vim`.
+
+To run a playbook use the command `ansible-playbook` commando to run
+`main.yml` direct from disk, do to so just run the following command:
+
+``` bash
+sudo ansible-playbook --connection=local main.yml
+```
+
+After a few seconds, vim will be installed on your machine.
+
+```
+PLAY [all] *************************************************************
+
+TASK [Gathering Facts] *************************************************
+ok: [localhost]
+
+TASK [install vim] *****************************************************
+ok: [localhost]
+
+PLAY RECAP *************************************************************
+localhost : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0
+```
+
+This is the first step, next part we shall create a more complex
+playbook and setup repository to run it remotely using `ansible-pull`.