A Technical I.T./DevOps Blog
Problem scenario
You want to see the different variables that Ansible can leverage (e.g., for playbooks to inject host-specific data into files). How do you find out what Ansible has access to on each server in /etc/ansible/hosts?
Solution
Run this command:
ansible all -m setup –tree /tmp/facts
…
Problem scenario
You run an Ansible playbook but you get an error about “this one looks like it might be an issue with missing quotes.” Your Ansible playbook compares two variables with each other.
After running ansible-playbook on the .yaml file, you get this error:
“ERROR! Syntax Error while loading YAML.
expected <block end>, but found ‘<scalar>’
The error appears to have been in ‘/home/cooluser/good.yaml’: line 12,
…
Problem scenario
You are trying to run an Ansible playbook with the “become: yes” stanza. You get this error after your ansible-playbook command:
fatal: [instance-11]: FAILED! => {“changed”: false, “checksum”: “da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709”, “msg”: “Unsupported parameters for (copy) module: become Supported parameters include: _original_basename, attributes, backup, checksum, content, delimiter, dest, directory_mode, follow, force, group, local_follow, mode, owner, regexp, remote_src, selevel, serole, setype, seuser, src, unsafe_writes, validate”}
Solution
Unindent the “become: yes” stanza so it is at the same level of its corresponding module.
…
Problem scenario
You want an Ansible playbook to run on specific managed nodes. You can create a list of the servers you want the playbook to apply to. How do you provide a list of specific hostnames and have the Ansible playbook run on each server?
Prerequisites
This assumes that you have installed Ansible and have it working with the managed nodes you want to run a playbook on.
…
Continue reading “How Do You Iterate through a List of Servers When Running an Ansible Playbook?”
Problem scenario
You have a complex Ansible playbook (a .yaml file) that you want to be more modular with discrete component files. You want to assign variables in a different file. This will make your Ansible playbook have fewer lines. Your playbook must read in the variables from a separate file and inject them into the playbook when it is run. You appreciate Unix philosophy of having things be modular.
…
Problem scenario
To see if Ansible can run commands with sudo without being prompted, you want to run a test.
You want to see if sudo works for certain on your Linux server. But you do not want to destroy anything or change any files. What should you do for a test that would tell you if sudo is working or not?
Solution
Run a command such as this: sudo ls /root
The above would not ordinarily work for a regular Linux user.
…
Continue reading “What Command Would Test If sudo Was Working without Making Any Changes?”
Problem scenario
You try to run ansible-vault, but you get this error:
“ERROR! Only one –vault-id can be used for encryption. This includes passwords from configuration and cli.” You want a fast solution, and you have complete control of the Ansible server. You do not need to use encryption or decryption for your Ansible operation(s). What should you do?
Solution
Modify the ansible.cfg file.
…
Problem scenario
You are using the ansible-vault command. You are not being prompted for a password as the documentation suggests you would be. You want to use ansible-vault create or ansible-vault edit and be prompted for a password. How can you specify a password manually? How can someone on a different Ansible server decrypt your encrypted files?
Possible solution #1
Modify the ansible.cfg file.
…
Problem scenario
You are using a variable in Ansible. You want to attach a string to it to augment this variable. You can rename it so later in the playbook you can call this modified, augmented version of the variable.
You assign the variable like this:
foo: ” {{ bar }}”
You want foo to have an extra string (e.g., “/subdirectory/path/to”). What do you do?
…
Continue reading “How Do You Prepend or Append to a Variable in Ansible?”
Problem scenario
You run “sudo salt-minion -l debug” on a Salt Minion. You see this message: “[INFO ] SaltReqTimeoutError: after 60 seconds. (Try 4 of 7)”
What should you do?
Solution
Go to the Salt Master server. Run this command: sudo systemctl start salt-master