/Quickstart---Manage-AIX-with-Ansible

Quickstart - Manage AIX with Ansible

Quickstart guide to setting up Ansible between two servers using the same non-privileged user.

+-------------+                  +--------------+
|   Ansible   |      ssh/22      |   Ansible    |
|  Execution  +----------------->|   managed    |
| Environment |                  |     AIX      |
+-------------+                  +--------------+

Setup the environment

Install Ansible on the first server to use it as Ansible execution environment.

dnf install ansible

Check the ansible installation and installed version.

ansible --version

Prepare a SSH key pair for password less SSH connections to Ansible managed systems.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "Ansible"

View your generated SSH public key and copy it for futher steps.

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Add your prepared SSH public key to your authorized_keys on the Ansible managed AIX.

echo "yourgeneratedpublickey" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Create a simple inventory with the group all and the server yourmanagedAnsibleAIX.

echo "[all]" >> inventory.ini
echo "yourmanagedAnsibleAIX" >> inventory.ini

Run the first Ansible command to check the SSH connection.

ansible all -i inventory.ini -l yourmanagedAnsibleAIX -m ping

Create a simple playbook to check the connection and rights on the Ansible managed AIX.

vi playbook.yml

Add the following code to the playbook.yml.

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  become: no
  tasks:
    - name: "Ping-check to validate network connection."
      ansible.builtin.ping:

    - name: "Gather data on the managed system, because we set gather_facts to no."
      ansible.builtin.setup:

    - name: "Show debug message with data about the connection."
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "Hello {{ ansible_user_id }}, you are connected to {{ ansible_hostname }} which is running {{ ansible_os_family }}."

    - name: "Check for superuser"
      block:
        - name: "Execute >whoami< on CLI as superuser."
          ansible.builtin.shell: whoami
          become: yes
          register: superuser_check_result
  
        - name: "Show debug message, if superuser check succeded."
          ansible.builtin.debug:
            msg: "Hello {{ ansible_user_id }}, you were able to run a command as {{ superuser_check_result.stdout }}"

      rescue:
        - name: "Show debug message, if superuser check failed."
          ansible.builtin.debug:
            msg: "Hello {{ ansible_user_id }}, you were not able to switch to superuser."

Run the playbook on yourmanagedAnsibleAIX.

ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory.ini -l yourmanagedAnsibleAIX

Setup sudo to allow the Ansible user to execute commands as superuser

Add sudoers rule if you want to allow the Ansible connect user to run commands as superuser.

echo "youransibleconnectuser ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

Re-run the playbook on yourmanagedAnsibleAIX to check if superuser commands work now.

ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory.ini -l yourmanagedAnsibleAIX

Feedback, Issues and Pull-Requests

Feel free to report issues, fork this project and submit pull requests.