ansible-role-common

This is a basic layout for an ansible project that can be expanded to support a site with a common set of utilities to be run on all hosts. It can be tested using Vagrant.

How to use

To use this role inside of ansible,

• add the common/ directory tree to your roles/ directory inside your ansible repository
• edit the inventory file to use the common role for every host (or specific hosts)
• to add packages, services, files, etc. to the common role:
  • modify variable base_packages in roles/common/defaults/main.yml
  • modify type or distro files in roles/common/vars for OS-specific stuff

Using Vagrant and Virtual Box for testing

This repo works best by typing vagrant up and watching the various boxes run one by one. But that can be tedious. I've changed the vagrant boxes from the standard ubuntu and fedora distros in which some don't have python already installed to ones that run ansible without any prior provisioning.

Both vagrant up and vagrant up --no-provision; ansible-playbook site.yml work for:

• Amazon Linux 2
• AlmaLinux 8 and 9 (a8, a9)
• CentOS 6 and 7 (c6, c7)
• RockyLinux 8 and 9 (r8, r9)
• Debian 10, 11, 12 (d9, d10, d11, d12)
• fedora 22
• fedora 23
• fedora 29
• fedora 30
• fedora 31
• fedora 32
• fedora 33
• fedora 34
• fedora 35
• fedora 36
• fedora 37
• fedora 38
• ubuntu 18.04
• ubuntu 20.04
• ubuntu 22.04

Only vagrant up works for

• fedora 21 (requires vagrant to provision correctly with 2nd NIC and install python)

Appendix A -- Building your own Vagrant box with Packer

The following sites are very useful for building your own Vagrant boxes in Virtual

• https://www.engineyard.com/blog/building-a-vagrant-box
• https://www.skoblenick.com/vagrant/creating-a-custom-box-from-scratch

And this git repo is good for creating packer templates:

• https://github.com/mrlesmithjr/packer-templates.git

Appendix B -- OS and Versions Tested

The following OS and versions have been tested:

• Amazon Linux 2
• AlmaLinux 8 and 9
• CentOS 6, 7
• RockyLinux 8 and 9
• Debian 10 through 12 (64-bit buster, trusty, bookworm)
• Fedora 21 through 38
• Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic), 20.04 (focal), 22.04 (jammy)

Note: 12/7/21

• virtualbox 6.1.28+ does ##not## work with Vagrant 2.18+
• ubuntu 21.11 does not have a working install of ansible, virtualbox

Note: 7/23/22

• virtualbox 6.1.36 does not install on either Almalinux 9 or RockyLinux 9

Note: 7/30/23

• Debian 9 no longer offers patches; no longer any release file; removed from Vagrantfile
• RockyLinux 9.2 and Debian 12 work