@black3dynamite said in Ansible facts nested variable syntax preference:

Looks like Bracket notation is best choice instead of dot.

Bracket notation always works. Dot notation can cause problems because some keys collide with attributes and methods of python dictionaries. Use bracket notation if you use keys which start and end with two underscores (which are reserved for special meanings in python) or are any of the known public attributes:

Overlooked that in the documentation. While it's less efficient to type [' and '] rather than ., I'll live with it. 🙂

@Obsolesce said in YAML terminology and Ansible:

@Pete-S said in YAML terminology and Ansible:

@Obsolesce said in YAML terminology and Ansible:

@Pete-S said in YAML terminology and Ansible:

Other than that it doesn't matter to me what anyone calls it.

You are 100% to call it whatever you want. But a key/value pair is commonly referred to as a dictionary... or a hash table which is a dictionary data type. This isn't exclusive to Python in the least.

"Commonly referred" depends on the programming language in question. For example in many other languages it's commonly called an array or collection and never a dictionary.

If you look at the part you quoted, YAML calls it mappings.

The proper computer science terminology would be associative array.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_array

The best thing to do is to call it exactly what the language or software you are referring to calls it. If Ansible wants you to create what it has named in their documentation as a dictionary in YAML, that's what you refer to it as. Otherwise, someone who is familiar with Ansible and it's documentation won't know what the hell you are talking about if you call it your own thing.

I can agree with that point of view - YAML in the context of Ansible.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/YAMLSyntax.html

So you'd call it dictionaries then. And lists.

@travisdh1

yh all works just the import/export thing is not 100% if you have 2 awx instances

@stacksofplates said in Automated Provisioning - KVM & CM tools:

@fuznutz04 said in Automated Provisioning - KVM & CM tools:

@stacksofplates said in Automated Provisioning - KVM & CM tools:

Terraform will do this and I have an Ansible role to do it also.
As @IRJ mentioned Vagrant will work also. However I feel Terraform is a better fit as you have more control over the specific pieces of your infrastructure.

You would still prefer Terraform over Ansible for this as well?

Yeah. My role can create the VMs, but Terraform had more functionality for that. Ansible overlaps in the infrastructure provisioning space a lot, but it lacks keeping states like Terraform does.

I'd like to learn both. I just started with Ansible a day or two ago. I have been (and still am) using SaltStack.

@JaredBusch said in Can someone explain yaml spacing to me because Im going insane:

@DustinB3403 said in Can someone explain yaml spacing to me because Im going insane:

I'm aware there are tabs, this is due to Notepad++

There is a setting for that in Notepad++

I'll be searching for that tomorrow.

@stacksofplates said in Ansible Agent Option?:

Yeah it's obviously bad to treat it like a LAN but if you stop using tools just because it can be treated that way you are sometimes stopping yourself from doing some really interesting and helpful things.

Yes, LAN-like tools are only LAN-like if you treat them in that fashion. The behaviour is rarely intrinsic.

This is a good starter video:

Youtube Video

Another thing to note. I believe it's the rabbitmq password that can't accept an @ in the password.

I should give Ansible a go one of these days, because whenever I research it, it seems to fall short of Salt, but it would be nice to really have concrete experience of how it falls short.

My current thinking is that if there's a windows feature that Ansible that Salt doesn't, I could probably just grab the powershell script + any dependent scripts and create Salt state/module wrappers around it.

Alternatively, Salt can run Ansible playbooks on minions, but the wrapper approach is more minimalist (don't have to install Ansible on each minion) and keeps secret security simpler.

@flaxking said in Which is easier to learn Ansible or Chef or Puppet:

The whole container/CM thing is kind of at a weird place right now. With containers, we've sort of migrated back to the golden image thing, just with the pressure to create an image using a config file. I don't really like images on docker hub that don't have links to the dockerfile.

Yes, images that can't be tweaked without rebuilding. It's has benefits, and a lot of caveats. Having to deploy new containers for every patch is pretty silly. And so many things can't be immutable, including the platform on which the containers run.

At the end of the day, containers are either mutable, or immutable. The former need CM inside the container, the later need it outside the container.

@wirestyle22 said in Ansible 2.4.2.0 on CentOS 7--ping module isn't working:

@stacksofplates That's pretty incredible. Any advice on things I should attempt to set up right now for learning purposes?

A big benefit is Ansible Galaxy. Look over how everyone sets up their stuff. That will give you good ideas on what to try and how to start writing stuff.

For anyone interested, I recently setup Ansible AWX on Fedora 27 using this guide. Running as a local VM so didn't do anything with Nginx / reverse proxy.

@black3dynamite said in Ansible role for GRAV:

@stacksofplates said in Ansible role for GRAV:

I think the coolest thing about it is being a flat file setup, you can check the whole CMS into Git and do all of your edits and updates through configuration management.

So I would just have create a new repo from within the root directory?

Well I was thinking more update the site, make page changes, etc on my local repo. Push changes up to my repo in Gitlab/Github whatever and then have a post-receive hook that pushes changes to the web server.

Here’s mine based off of the DISA STIGS.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/15041/ansible-hardening-role

It's kind of hard to help without seeing the playbook/role you created.

Great

@fabionoth said in Ansible Create KVM Guests:

Hi @stacksofplates. Did you find something about virt module.
Here's https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/virt_module.html#virt-module link.

But, I cannot build a machine? with creating command.
by the way: your article is awesome.

Yeah that's why I wrote this. That virt module doesn't support cloning systems. I never got around to linking that module. I'll see if I can find it again. You just need to put it in your local module library and then you can call it like any other module.

Ok added your site. Scott's is on there too.

http://aindien.com/my-favorite-blogs/