Server/Using Ansible

Fedora Server Ansible Team Activists Fredrik Arneving (swefredde) Peter Boy (pboy) John Himpel (jwhimpel) more to add (hopefully)

Providing easy installation and pre-configuration for key services with Ansible

This page is intended to organize and structure the discussion about improving the use of Ansible to support Fedora Server Edition system management. It is work in progress, not documentation of finished procedures.

Use Cases – What do we want to achieve

1. Installation of application server - the Wildfly example

• Experience has shown that building a wildfly rpm is not feasible. This is not only true for Fedora, but also for other distributions. As a way out, many instructions for installation can be found, which follow different ways and installation systematics.

• One idea is to provide a "wildfly-installation-preparation.rpm" that installs the systemd infrastructure and a script that informs that an installation of the software is required to use it. For installation, a script or an Ansible playbook is provided to guide the system administrator.

• Script or Playbook ensure that all installations of this type follow the same principles and comply with the Fedora guidelines for installing Java software.

Cons

• Fedora policies prohibit this type of rpm.

2. Installation of a complex service using different packages - the example Mail Service

• A mail service includes several different packages, e.g. Postfix, Dovecot, SpamAssassin, OpenDKIM, etc., which must be configured to work together.
• There are manuals that often contain configuration instructions that do not apply to Fedora. General idea so far:

3. Linux System Roles

There is a project that provides a collection of Ansible Playbooks for typical system administration tasks:

• https://linux-system-roles.github.io
• https://github.com/linux-system-roles
• https://ansible.github.io/workshops/exercises/ansible_rhel_90/6-system-roles/

Topics to discuss:

1. Do the scripts play well with Fedora Server
2. Do we want to encourage use ot those scripts
3. How can we make the (better) usable in Fedora Server

How to distribute / distribution options

• downloadable from server-wg home page (??)