Chrony servers

[ArseniiPetrovich]

Since deployment-playbooks is going to support more cloud providers than AWS only, chrony.yml playbook in the preconf role should be rewritten. Now it configures only one NTP server, that uses AWS local subnet IP (169.254.169.123), which is not available for non-AWS VMs.
I think we can use the other NTP server, which would be more common for different cloud providers or setup some kind of conditional configuration.
@phahulin, what do you think?

[phahulin]

Good catch. I think we should try to detect if ntp is installed and do nothing if it is (most probably it is preconfigured by the hosting provider), if it isn't - we can install chrony and if it's aws, we can select the ntp server above. I did something like this in another playbook, maybe this code can help:

---
- name: Preconf.Chrony - check if NTP is installed
  become: yes
  become_user: root
  command: "systemctl is-active ntp"
  register: ntp_active
  failed_when: ntp_active.rc not in [0,3]

- name: Chrony
  become: yes
  become_user: root
  when: ntp_active.stdout == "inactive"
  block:
    - name: Preconf.Chrony - install package
      apt:
        name: chrony
        update_cache: yes

    - name: Preconf.Chrony - select amazon time server (for AWS)
      lineinfile:
        dest: /etc/chrony/chrony.conf
        insertafter: '^pool'
        line: 'server 169.254.169.123 prefer iburst'
        state: present
      notify:
        - restart chrony
      when: ansible_bios_version is search("amazon")

    - name: Preconf.Chrony - ensure chrony is running and enabled to start at boot
      service:
        name: chrony
        state: started
        enabled: yes

[ArseniiPetrovich]

@phahulin
Yes, that will work. But, could you tell me, please, what is the reasons for using Chrony instead of ntp? I've found out that ntp.yml is included in preconf role, but is not included into main.yml playbook (and, accordingly, is not executed).

[phahulin]

chrony seems to be more feature-rich https://chrony.tuxfamily.org/comparison.html also it's recommended by aws, where most of our infrastructure is at the moment

[ArseniiPetrovich]

Should i remove ntp.yml playbook then or leave it as is?

[phahulin]

Yes, I think you can remove it

[Ykisialiou]

Addressed in #144 and looks like can be closed