Contained Ansible Environment

When installing Ansible on Linux, ansible.cfg and hosts files are at /etc/ansible. Instead of changing the files there, I am going to create a more contained Ansible environment.

I am doing this because of the following 3 reasons.

• The configuration and host list does not get affected by external changes.
• The changes can be traced with source control like Git.
• The changes can be reviewed by your peers for any error.

Let’s create the ansible.cfg file.

ansible-config init --disabled -t all > ansible.cfg

Now I am going to create hosts file in the same directory with the following content.

[jenkins]
jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net ansible_user=opc
 
[test]
ansibletest.westcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com ansible_user=azureuser

Now add or uncomment the following line in ansible.cfg file.

inventory=./hosts

Test run.

ansible all -m ping

As long as you can access those hosts from your ssh, the command should be successful.

ansibletest.westcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/libexec/platform-python"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}
jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}