Solved Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?

[DustinB3403]

@IRJ I'm salty because I've brought automation tools like Anisble, chef, puppet and salt up before and the only responses have been minimal at best.

Can we have an in-depth this is how to get started conversation?

[IRJ]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@stacksofplates so that seems simple enough, how do you put in the custom details like I am pushing to these 1 by 1?

the office location, the expected user and the asset tag to create a single -computername ?

Also since we're on it, how do you use tools like brew.sh to install and update third party software?

To answer this question, you need to edit ansible hosts file. You would add the IPs to the group. You can be as granular as you want

[macs]
192.0.2.101
192.0.2.102
192.0.2.103

[linux]
192.0.2.201
192.0.2.202

[macbooks]
192.0.2.102
192.0.2.103

[IRJ]

@stacksofplates said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

So I admittedly don't know anything about Macs because I don't care to, but here is a simple way to do this with Ansible.

---
- name: Set crap with scutil
  hosts: macs
  become: true
  user: dustin
  vars:
    -computername: "this_computer_sucks"

  tasks:
    - name: set computername
      shell: "scutil --set ComputerName {{ computername }}"

    - name: set hostname
      shell: "scutil --set HostName {{ computername }}"

    - name: set localhostname
      shell: "scutil --set LocalHostName {{ computername }}"

If spacing is off, I'm on my phone so suck it up.

@DustinB3403 , he assumed you had a group named macs on this playbook.You can change that under hosts

[DustinB3403]

@IRJ Using an specific IP wouldn't work I'd have to use dhcp scopes and filter out Windows PCs from that.

[IRJ]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@IRJ Using an specific IP wouldn't work I'd have to use dhcp scopes and filter out Windows PCs from that.

add hostnames?

[DustinB3403]

@IRJ said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@IRJ Using an specific IP wouldn't work I'd have to use dhcp scopes and filter out Windows PCs from that.

add hostnames?

Which of the 3 above names would you think apple considers the host name and you want me to type out ~170 computer names? Ansible can't handle DHCP based clients?

[IRJ]

Do you have dns?

[DustinB3403]

@IRJ said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

Do you have dns?

Yes

[IRJ]

You may be able to do something like this? @stacksofplates can probably chime in

192.168.1.[1:254]

[stacksofplates]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@stacksofplates so that seems simple enough, how do you put in the custom details like I am pushing to these 1 by 1?

the office location, the expected user and the asset tag to create a single -computername ?

Also since we're on it, how do you use tools like brew.sh to install and update third party software?

There's a few different ways to approach it. A good simple way is to leverage your inventory and group_vars.

Here's an example inventory:

[florida]
10.23.50.15 comp_user=Mary tag_number=000335
osx1.fl.test.com ansible_host=10.23.50.16 comp_user=Sally tag_number=000678

[california]
10.55.12.34 comp_user=Pete tag_number=000446
osx2.ca.test.com ansible_host=10.55.12.35 comp_user=Jim tag_number=000445

[macs:children]
florida
california

So here you have an inventory that defines 4 different hosts. You can reference a host by IP address/FQDN or by an alias. In this case osx1.fl.test.com and osx2.ca.test.com are aliases for the ansible_host variable. The hosts are grouped into 3 groups. One group is called florida and obviously has the two hosts for florida in it. The other group is called california and is similar. The third group is called macs and it has children which are florida and california. So all of the hosts in florida and california are also in the macs group.

Variables are a big deal and there's now 22 places to set variables (please don't try to use them all at the same time) and they all have an order of presidence. Simpler is better. The group_vars directory holds files named after a group and does exactly what it sounds like. So here we could set up a group_vars file called florida and it would contain:

location: florida
dns_server: 1.2.3.4
timezone: eastern

We can have a file for california and it could contain:

location: california
dns_server: 2.3.4.5
timezone: pacific

Then in the playbook I referenced above you can use these facts (including variables in your inventory). There are magic variables that are always present on every system and you can gather facts about systems also. One of the magic variables is inventory_hostname which is the alias (or just the fqdn if you didn't set an alias). So in your example you could do this:

---
- name: Set crap with scutil
  hosts: macs
  become: true
  user: dustin

  tasks:
    - name: set computername
      shell: "scutil --set ComputerName {{ comp_user }}{{ tag_number }}"

    - name: set hostname
      shell: "scutil --set HostName {{ location }}{{ inventory_hostname }}"

    - name: set localhostname
      shell: "scutil --set LocalHostName {{ location }}{{ comp_user }}{{ tag_number }}"

The comp_user and tag_number variables can be set in a directory called host_vars and a file named after the host name, but I don't commonly use that.

[stacksofplates]

@IRJ said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

You may be able to do something like this? @stacksofplates can probably chime in

192.168.1.[1:254]

You can do something like that and even mac[1:3000].test.com, but it's valuable to have each system defined so you can control variables for each one. It's fairly trivial to export from your asset management system and make an inventory from that.

[DustinB3403]

@stacksofplates said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@IRJ said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

You may be able to do something like this? @stacksofplates can probably chime in

192.168.1.[1:254]

You can do something like that and even mac[1:3000].test.com, but it's valuable to have each system defined so you can control variables for each one. It's fairly trivial to export from your asset management system and make an inventory from that.

This is only true if I get to hit my coworker with a hammer

[stacksofplates]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@stacksofplates so that seems simple enough, how do you put in the custom details like I am pushing to these 1 by 1?

the office location, the expected user and the asset tag to create a single -computername ?

Also since we're on it, how do you use tools like brew.sh to install and update third party software?

For brew there's a module to interact with it. You just declare the package you want installed and it does it.

- name: Ensure foo is installed
  homebrew:
    name: foo
    state: present

You can also do multiple:

- name: Ensure packages are installed
  homebrew:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  loop:
    - softwareA
    - softwareB
    - softwareC

[DustinB3403]

@stacksofplates do you install the role or module? I looked at this before and the documentation is lacking.

[DustinB3403]

I know I'm asking a lot, but it's because when I have asked in the past it was a RTFM response.

Which doesn't really fix the issue of the documentation is lacking or convoluted for what the platform is.

And I know these tools aren't designed to manage user workstations, but can do it. Thus the interest.

So if you're willing to explain and answer my million questions, I'll be happy to test.

[stacksofplates]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

@stacksofplates do you install the role or module? I looked at this before and the documentation is lacking.

The modules are part of the Ansible install. You don't need to install them separately unless you write your own. A role is like a library. It's a set of tasks you write to accomplish something and you can call it like a function or library.

For example I have a role I wrote that installs and enables firewalld and sets the ports/services you define. But I can call that role and pass in different ports and services for different hosts and groups because it's like a function.

[stacksofplates]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

I know I'm asking a lot, but it's because when I have asked in the past it was a RTFM response.

Which doesn't really fix the issue of the documentation is lacking or convoluted for what the platform is.

And I know these tools aren't designed to manage user workstations, but can do it. Thus the interest.

So if you're willing to explain and answer my million questions, I'll be happy to test.

I don't find it convoluted but it doesn't really matter, I'll do my best to answer whatever I can for you.

[DustinB3403]

@stacksofplates so how do I check to see if this role is installed?

https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-homebrew because this seems like the thing people recommend using

[DustinB3403]

Fedora Server 30 - with ansible --version 3.7.3 installed

[stacksofplates]

@DustinB3403 said in Scripting - How do you store your credentials and call them later?:

Fedora Server 30 - with ansible --version 3.7.3 installed

Can't be 3.7.3. They just released 2.8 less than a month ago (that's the Python version).

To install a role use ansible-galaxy. So you would run:

ansible-galaxy install geerlingguy.homebrew

If you go to the galaxy site for the roles it gives you all of the info: https://galaxy.ansible.com/geerlingguy/homebrew