Installing IBM i collection to Ansible server

There are two options to install IBM i collection for Ansible:

Installing from Ansible Galaxy

Ansible Galaxy is the package manager for Ansible. The collection is published to Ansible Galaxy on a regular basis: https://galaxy.ansible.com/ibm/power_ibmi

In order to install using Ansible Galaxy, you must:
1. Install all of the software listed in Requirements.
2. Follow the instructions for Installing using Ansible Galaxy.
Installing from source

You may wish to install the collection from source if you cannot access Ansible Galaxy due to firewall or proxy issues, or if you need to install a version of the collection that has not yet been published.

In order to install from source, you must:
1. Install all of the software listed in Requirements.
2. Follow the instructions for Installing from source.

Requirements

In order to use this Ansible collection at release 3.1.0 and beyond, you must have the following pre-requisite software installed and available on your Ansible server:

Python v3.9+

Python can be installed from a variety of sources, including the package manager for your operating system (apt, yum, etc). If you install Python from the package manager for your operating system, you must also install the development libraries (usually a package named python3-devel), as these are required when installing modules through pip.

The official Python website: https://www.python.org/downloads/

The unofficial Python version manager: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv

Ansible core v2.15 or v2.16

Ansible core v2.15 requires Python 3.9+ on the Ansible control node.

Ansible core v2.16 requires Python 3.10+ on the Ansible control node.

The full compatiblity or support matrix for Ansible Core versions and Python levels for the control node and targets is provided at https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/release_and_maintenance.html.

Ansible can be installed from a variety of sources, including the package manager for your operating system (apt, yum, etc). You can also install it using pip, the package manager for Python:
pip3 install ansible

Requirements for IBM i Ansible Server / Control Node

For an IBM i Ansible control node, the latest levels of Ansible should be installed with python pip because there is not a pre-packaged Ansible rpm above version 2.9. Ansible may also be installed from the github source with a stable ansible branch. The following steps can be used to install Ansible with pip.

There are some necessary open source packages that must be installed with yum (if not already present):

yum install git
yum install python39-cryptography
yum install python39-paramiko
yum install pase-utf8-locale
yum install sshpass   # allows specifying ssh password if desired

Configure ~/.profile for language environment variables (verify with ‘’locale’’ command) such as:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
Install Ansible. Either full ansible (a) or ansible-core (b).
1. Install Ansible at 8.X level (v2.15 core) or 9.X level (v2.16 core) with pip (skip step 3b). For example, to install level 8.1 that includes v2.15.6 ansible-core use the following:
```
python3 -m pip install --user ansible==8.1
```
2. Alternatively ansible-core may be installed instead of full ansible, but some additional ibmi dependent collections may need to be installed via ansible-galaxy. For example, to install ansible core v2.15.1 use the following command:
```
python3 -m pip install --user ansible-core==2.15.1
```
Note that Ansible core v2.16 cannot be used with the currently available IBM i Python rpm packages (Python 3.9 is highest level).
Add the following path to ~/.profile for the ansible executables:
```
export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH
```
Ensure dependent collections are installed if only using ansible-core. Perform the following collection install commands if ‘’ansible-galaxy collection list’’ doesn’t show these collections.
```
ansible-galaxy collection install openstack.cloud

ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.posix
```

Installing using Ansible Galaxy

You can use the ansible-galaxy command to install a collection from Ansible Galaxy, the package manager for Ansible:

ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.power_ibmi

Installing from source

You can use the ansible-galaxy command to install a collection built from source. To build your own collection, follow these steps:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/IBM/ansible-for-i.git

Build the collection artifact:

cd ansible-for-i
ansible-galaxy collection build

Install the collection, replacing x.y.z with the current version:

ansible-galaxy collection install ibm-power_ibmi-x.y.z.tar.gz

Enabling IBM i nodes

Before IBM i systems can be managed-nodes of Ansible, a few dependencies have to be installed on IBM i.

5733SC1 Base and Option 1

5770DG1

python3

python3-itoolkit

python3-ibm_db

1. 5733SC1 and 5770DG1 are license programs, you can download them at http://www-304.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess/index.wss.

python3, python3-itoolkit, python3-ibm_db are open source packages. There are a few ways to install these packages and you could choose from one of them.

Installing rpm packages manually: Rpm packages can be installed via ‘yum’ packages manager on IBM i. However, yum is not shipped by IBM i by default. Refer the guide here to install yum https://bitbucket.org/ibmi/opensource/src/master/docs/yum/. Then install these packages by below command:

/Qopensys/pkgs/bin/yum install python3 python3-itoolkit python3-ibm_db

Installing rpm packages automatically onto IBM i systems which can access internet

1) Make sure you have IBM i collection installed on your Ansible server.
2) Issue below command in order to use setup playbook to enable IBM i:
cd ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_ibmi/playbooks
3) Input information of target IBM i in host_ibmi.ini in order to run playbooks.
4) Run setup play book with below command:
ansible-playbook -i host_ibmi.ini enable-ansible-for-i/setup.yml

Installing rpm packages automatically onto IBM i systems which are offline: An ‘Offline’ IBM i means that the IBM i system cannot connect to the internet and is not able to access https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/pase/rpms/repo/. Before installing them, you can download installation packages to Ansible server.

1) Make sure you have IBM i collection installed on your Ansible server.
2) Issue below command in order to use setup playbook to enable IBM i:
cd ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_ibmi/playbooks
3) Input information of target IBM i in host_ibmi.ini in order to run playbooks.
4) Follow the steps in ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_ibmi/playbooks/enable_offline_ibmi/README.md
5) Run playbook with below command. The command assumes that the installation packages are in /tmp/ibmi-packages directory of Ansible server.
ansible-playbook -i path/to/inventory enable_offline_ibmi/main.yml -e 'package_path=/tmp/ibmi-packages'