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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`.
|
