DevOps Classroom notes 05/Mar/2025

Writing Playbooks

Ansible Module

• Ansible module is an smallest unit of work in ansible
• We use modules in tasks and handler
• module does a certain work with a desired state (generally)
• Ansible has lots of modules
• basic task syntax in playbook

- name: do something
  <module-name>:
    arg-1-name: arg-1-value
    ..
    arg-n-name: arg-n-value
    state: <desired-state>

• Lets look at a sample

- name: create a file
  ansible.builtin.file:
    path: /tmp/1.txt
    state: touch

• Modules can also be executed from adhoc commands

ansible -m ping all
ansible -m ansible.builtin.file -a "path=/tmp/1.txt state=touch" all

Update Ways of Working

• Ensure you have working manual commands
• For each command try to find an equivalent ansible module which makes this a task

Install apache server on ubuntu 24.04

• Manual steps

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2 -y

• Now verify the installation by navigating to http://<public-ip>
  
• Now lets start writing playbook
• Create a new directory with two files apache.yaml and hosts
• Playbook

---
- name: installing apache
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: install apache
      ansible.builtin.apt:
        name: apache2
        update_cache: yes
        state: present

• inventory

172.31.4.82

How to Find the module in ansible

• Get to know your command
  
• To understand modules documentation Watch classroom recording

Executing Playbook

• Playbook execution cli reference

ansible-playbook -i hosts <playbook>

• First check syntax

ansible-playbook --syntax-check <playbook>