Running Ansible

there are 3 ways to run Ansible:

• running a command: ansible GROUP -a COMMAND
• running a module: ansible GROUP -m MODULE
• running a playbook: ansible-playbook playbook.yml

Ansible extensive list of builtin modules there are about 450~ modules in the list, some popular ones are:

• file - creates files and directories , sets permissions
• apt/yum - manages packages - install, update, remove
• service - manages services - stop, start, runlevel (at boot)
• copy - copies files and directories
• git - Deploy software (or files) from git checkouts
• ping - Try to connect to host, verify a usable python and return pong on success

trying our first command:

ansible virtualhosts -m ping

this will fail since we did not setup the passwordless ssh.

ansible virtualhosts -m ping
SSH password:
ubuntu-1 | UNREACHABLE! => {
    "changed": false,
    "msg": "Authentication failure.",
    "unreachable": true
}
ubuntu-2 | UNREACHABLE! => {
    "changed": false,
    "msg": "Authentication failure.",
    "unreachable": true
}