Ansible macOS Provisioner

This repo helps provision a brand new or existing macOS system.

Some basics before you begin to provision your system. This tool requires Ansible and Homebrew to perform the installations. Why these tools? Ansible is a beautiful automation software. Homebrew is the best package management software for macOS systems. These two are meant for each other when it comes to provisioning a macOS. If I lost you already, don't worry about it. The tool installs all dependencies necessary for a beautiful easy automated installation. So kick back and relax.

Step 1 - Prepare

Prepare system:

• (optional) System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Disable "Force Click and haptic feedback"
• Launch Mac App Store and authenticate using your Apple iCloud Account
• Launch Terminal app
  • Run git command to install x-tools
  • Clone this repo: git clone https://github.com/ansiblejunky/ansible-macos-provisioner.git
  • Configure vim editor: cp data/.vimrc ~/.vimrc
• Run ./install_system.sh to install basic system requirements such as x-tools
• Run ./install_brew.sh to install homebrew package manager on your Mac
• Run ./install_python.sh to install a python environment using pyenv and ansible
• Backup/Restore to New Laptop
  • Launch backup software on old system
  • Select backup of specific folders
  • Perform the backup to external device (USB Harddrive, Cloud, etc)
  • Install your backup software on new system: brew install carbon-copy-cloner
  • Register the software
  • Restore to the new system
  • Copy manually other selected files/folders (.ssh folder, . files, etc)

Step 2 - Automation

Install the software:

• Customize the software defined for your system
• Run ansible-playbook -v install_software.yml --ask-become-pass to install software. Some software will require your password so this asks for it in the beginning so you can go get a coffee
• Done!

Step 3 - Post Configuration

Other things not automated yet, but common tasks to take care of.

• Browser configuration
  • Launch Brave Browser
  • Configure Sync to get extensions, tabs, settings from old laptop browser
  • Navigate to Brave -> History to get opened tabs that were synced from old laptop
• Yubikey configuration (see instructions below)
• iTerm2 configuration
  • Preference -> Advanced -> Mouse Tab, set Scroll wheel sends arrow keys when in alternate screen mode to Yes
  • Configure zsh: cp data/.zshrc ~/.zshrc
  • Install oh-my-zsh
• WebCatalog configuration; install these apps
  • Gmail
  • Google Keep
  • Chat GPT
  • Google Chat
• Conference tools configuration
  • Test all conference tools to ensure they can share screens and mic works, etc. (this usually requires a lot of approvals for Mac security)
• Printer configuration in System Preferences

Visual Studio Code

The following is my custom configuration of VSCode:

Extensions:

# Ansible
code --install-extension redhat.ansible
# TODO Highlight
code --install-extension wayou.vscode-todo-highlight
# VSCode Remote Developer
code --install-extension ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack
# VSCode PDF Reader
code --install-extension tomoki1207.pdf

Settings (edit $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json):

{
  "window.title": "${rootName}${separator}${profileName}",
  "workbench.tree.indent": 20,
  "python.terminal.activateEnvironment": false
}

Open Windows:

# Open windows with common folders
code ~/Projects/customers
code ~/Projects/ansible-automation-journey
code ~/Projects/ansible-role-template
code ~/Projects/ansible-project-template
code ~/Projects/ansible-networking

Yubikey

Use the following steps to install and configure your Yubikey on your new Mac.

• Install Yubikey Manager tool: brew install yubico-yubikey-manager
• Start Yubikey Manager app
• Plug the Yubikey device into a Mac slot
• App should recognize it and display icon and firmware info
• Select "Applications" from the top

Slot 1 is for "short touch", Slot 2 is for "long touch" so you can setup 2 slots to manage 2 systems and out-of-the-box Yubikey configures slot 1 to work with their website. I don't care about connecting to Yubico and I prefer having the short touch mechanism, so I did the following...

• Select "Delete" on slot 1 to remove the existing configuration
• Select "Configure" on slot 1
• Select "OATH-HOTP" option
• To get a "Secret Key" we need to generate that from RH website
  • Connect to Red Hat's VPN using Viscosity software and your current FreeOTP app on your phone
  • Navigate to https://token.redhat.com/ and login using kerberos credentials
  • Select "Create Software Token" from left-hand panel
  • ensure "Generate OTP Key on the Server" is enabled
  • enter a Description of the token
  • enter the PIN you want (probably same you had before)
  • select "Enroll Token" button
  • Use the FreeOTP app on your phone to scan the QR code (it may ask for the issuer - use 'Red Hat')
• On the website, there is a link at the top to get the URL when you do not have a QR scanner. Use that and it shows you the Secret Key in the URL it generates.
• Place the secret key string into the Yubico Manager app - the last we left it sitting on a page where it requests the secret key. Ensure it has 6 digits set as well.
• Select "Finish" on the Yubico Manager app and it configures the slot correctly.
• Go back to the Red Hat token.redhat.com site and use the testing page to test your PIN and TOKEN. If necessary sync the token.
• You should get success on the sync and also testing it using the "TEST TOKEN" area on the bottom.
• You're done! Dang!

Where to find software

To find other homebrew software and formulae, use the following links.

• http://brewformulas.org
• http://macappstore.org/

For the best free Mac applications, look here: http://thriftmac.com

Improvements

• TODO: Fix Ansible tasks for shortcuts, links
• Automate postman preferences and saved environments (export them and then import them)
• Automate iTerm2 preferences; for now backup your iTerm2 preferences using these commands
  • Copy preferences file: cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist data/
  • Convert from binary to XML format: plutil -convert xml1 data/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist
  • More information here
• Automate docked items
• Configure screen saver and wallpaper to point to Pictures/images
• Pages (verify book opens)
• GarageBand (transfer files)
• Register the Carbon Copy Cloner software
• Register Tuxera NTFS (for windows USB drives)
• Automate install of other stuff
  • Install Keka as archive utility (or izip)
  • Install and run Malwarebytes
  • Install and run Bitdefender Virus Scanner
  • Install and register Telegram
  • iBooks Author - verify books open; Documents/Books/...
  • BookWright (Blurb application)
  • Install and register easyHDR3
  • Install and register Panorama Maker
  • Install and register Photomatix Pro 6
  • Amazon Music
  • Install printer and HP Easy Scan (verify scanner)
  • XnConvert (convert multiple images): brew cask install xnconvert
  • Balena Etcher disk burning tool: brew cask install balenaetcher
  • Install wireshark
  • Install gimp as image editor tool

Notable Mac commandline tools

The following tools are some fun and useful tools I have found. Some come with the Mac OS and some can be installed.

dot_clean

Mac file systems and FAT32. You might notice when working with FAT32 file systems (often on USB drives) that there are files created with a dot-underscore prefix (._). These are created in order to handle the different attributes that are managed by the different file systems. You can clean them using the not-so-famous 'dot_clean' tool that comes with the macOS.

cd /Volumes/USBDRIVE/
dot_clean -m .

ditto

https://ss64.com/osx/ditto.html

say

Use Ansible say module to say things while the Playbook is running.

More information:

• https://ss64.com/osx/say.html
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SpeechRecognition/

Examples:

 # List all voices:
 say -v ?

 # List English-speaking voices:
 say --voice='?' |grep "en[_-]"

 say "Starting Ansible Automation" -v Samantha

caffeinate

https://ss64.com/osx/caffeinate.html

banner

banner -w [the width of the banner in pixels] [your message]

pbcopy and pbpaste

Provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clip-board) from command line http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/05/manipulating-the-clipboard-from-the-command-line/

Multiple File Renamer

You may need to rename multiple files at the same time, to conform to some naming convention.

Option #1: Use the Finder and this blog

Option #2: brew install rename http://plasmasturm.org/code/rename/

Author

This was written by John Wadleigh, based on my personal need to automate everything.