Ansible Installation and Configuration on Ubuntu — Automate Your Server Management

Ansible Installation and Configuration on Ubuntu — Automate Your Server Management



Tópico: Ansible Installation and Configuration on Ubuntu — Automate Your Server Management
Categoria: Tutoriais | Programação & Tecnologia
Idioma Principal: Português (Conteúdo de Tecnologia)

Descrição do Conteúdo / Informações:
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Introduction




What is Ansible?


Ansible is an automation language that can describe any IT environment, whether homelab or large-scale infrastructure. It is easy to learn and reads like clear documentation.

If you manage multiple servers and find yourself doing the same configuration over and over — setting up SSH keys, disabling root users, configuring firewalls — Ansible can automate the entire process and dramatically increase your productivity.

It only requires Ansible on the Control Node and Python 3 on the Managed Node.



What is the Control Node?


The system that Ansible is installed on — it controls the remote machines.



What is the Managed Node?


The remote system or host that Ansible controls. Ansible is agentless, meaning you don't need to install Ansible on managed nodes — just Python 3.



Installing Ansible on Ubuntu (Control Node)


sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible

Note: Ensure Python 3 is installed on your remote server. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ships with Python 3 by default.



Create the Inventory Folder and Hosts File


The hosts file maps the remote machines you want to control.

Folder structure:

Ansible/

├── inventory/

│   └── hosts

└── playbooks/

└── apt-update.yml

inventory/hosts

[servers]
vpsServer ansible_host=10.10.100.45
work-ToRule
10.10.45.62

You can give hosts an alias by pairing a name with an IP address. In the example above, vpsServer is an alias for 10.10.100.45.



Your First Playbook — Update Ubuntu and Set Timezone


Create playbooks/apt-update.yml:

- hosts: '*'
become: true
serial: 1
tasks:
- name: Set system timezone to Trinidad and Tobago time
community.general.timezone:
name: America/Port_of_Spain

- name: Update apt cache
apt:
update_cache: yes
cache_valid_time: 3600

- name: Upgrade all packages to the latest version
apt:
upgrade: dist

- name: Check if reboot is required
stat:
path: /var/run/reboot-required
register: reboot_required_file

- name: Reboot the server
reboot:
msg: 'Reboot initiated by Ansible due to package upgrades'
connect_timeout: 5
reboot_timeout: 300
pre_reboot_delay: 0
post_reboot_delay: 30
when: reboot_required_file.stat.exists



Breaking Down the Playbook


Key
Description

hosts: '*'
Target all hosts in inventory. Use an alias, DNS name, or IP to target a single host.

become: true
Grants Ansible sudo privileges.

serial: 1
Processes servers one at a time instead of all at once.

tasks
A list of individual actions to run on the target hosts.

Each task has four parts:

•
name — a plain-text description of what the task does

•
Collection (community.general) — the Ansible content bundle the module belongs to

•
Module (timezone, apt, reboot) — the tool that executes the action

•
Parameters (name: America/Port_of_Spain) — the specific options passed to the module

📚 Browse all available modules and collections at docs.ansible.com



Running the Playbook




Step 1 — Test connectivity with a ping


ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=FALSE ansible -i ./inventory/hosts vpsServer -m ping --user root --ask-pass

Flag
Description

ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=FALSE
Skips SSH host key verification — useful for fresh servers

-i ./inventory/hosts
Points to your inventory file

vpsServer
The target host alias

-m ping
Runs the ping module to check connectivity and Python availability

--ask-pass
Prompts for SSH password

Once you get a green pong response, you're ready to run the playbook.



Step 2 — Run the playbook


ansible-playbook ./playbooks/apt-update.yml --user root -e "ansible_port=22" --ask-pass --ask-become-pass -i ./inventory/hosts

Flag
Description

ansible-playbook
Runs a full automation script instead of a single ad-hoc task

./playbooks/apt-update.yml
Path to your playbook file

--user root
SSH connection username

-e "ansible_port=22"
Injects extra variable to force port 22

--ask-pass
Prompts for SSH login password

--ask-become-pass
Prompts for sudo password (redundant when logging in as root)

-i ./inventory/hosts
Points to your inventory file



Execution Flow


• Ansible reads ./inventory/hosts to find the target server's IP

• Prompts for SSH password

• Prompts for sudo password

• Connects to port 22 as root

• Opens apt-update.yml and executes each task in order



Conclusion


A big shout-out to Aldo @aldo_cve for recommending Ansible in a previous post — it's been a great addition to my server management workflow.

I hope you found this walkthrough useful. Stay tuned for more posts where I share playbooks I find useful in my day-to-day infrastructure work.

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