Playbooks

The sample playbooks that are included in the IBM Power Systems AIX collection demonstrate how to use the collection content.

Playbook Documentation

An Ansible playbook consists of organized instructions that define work for a managed node (host) to be managed with Ansible.

A playbooks directory that contains a sample playbook is included in the IBM Power Systems AIX collection. The sample playbook can be run with the ansible-playbook command with some modification to the inventory and group_vars.

You can find the playbook content that is included with the collection in the same location where the collection is installed. For more information, refer to the installation documentation. In the following examples, this document will refer to the installation path as ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix.

Sample Configuration and Setup

Each release of Ansible provides options in addition to the ones identified in the sample configurations that are included with this collection. These options allow you to customize how Ansible operates in your environment. Ansible supports several sources to configure its behavior and all sources follow the Ansible precedence rules.

The Ansible configuration file ansible.cfg can override almost all ansible-playbook configurations.

You can specify the SSH port used by Ansible and instruct Ansible where to write the temporary files on the target. This can be easily done by adding the options to your inventory or ansible.cfg.

For more information about available configurations for ansible.cfg, read the Ansible documentation on Ansible configuration settings.

Inventory

Ansible works with multiple managed nodes (hosts) at the same time, using a list or group of lists known as an inventory. Once the inventory is defined, you can use patterns to select the hosts or groups that you want Ansible to run against.

Included in the playbooks directory is a sample inventory file that can be used to manage your nodes with a little modification. This inventory file should be included when running the sample playbook.

nimserver:
  hosts:
    nim:
      ansible_host: aix_target_address
      ansible_user: aix_target_username
      ansible_python_interpreter: path_to_python_interpreter_binary_on_aix_target

The value for the property ansible_host is the hostname of the managed node; for example, ansible_host: regency.aus.stglabs.ibm.com

The value for the property aix_target_username is the user name to use when connecting to the host; for example, ansible_user: padmin.

The value for the property ansible_python_interpreter is the target host Python path. This is useful for systems with more than one Python installation, or when Python is not installed in the default location /usr/bin/python; for example, ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/bin/python

Group_vars

Although you can store variables in the inventory file, storing separate host and group variables files may help you organize your variable values more easily. Included with the sample playbook are sample variables files all.yml and nimserver.yml.

Run the playbooks

The sample playbooks must be run from the playbooks directory of the installed collection: ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix/playbooks/.

Access the sample Ansible playbook and ensure that you are within the collection playbooks directory where the sample files are included: ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix/playbooks/.

Use the Ansible command ansible-playbook to run the sample playbooks. The command syntax is ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>; for example, ansible-playbook -i inventory demo_flrtvc.yml.

This command assumes that the controller’s public SSH key has been shared with the managed node. If you want to avoid entering a username and password each time, copy the SSH public key to the managed node using the ssh-copy-id command; for example, ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/mykey.pub user@<hostname>.

Alternatively, you can use the --ask-pass option to be prompted for the user’s password each time a playbook is run; for example, ansible-playbook -i inventory demo_flrtvc.yml --ask-pass.

Note

Using --ask-pass is not recommended because it will hinder performance.
Using --ask-pass requires sshpass be installed on the controller. For further reference, see the ask-pass documentation.

Optionally, you can configure the console logging verbosity during playbook execution. This is helpful in situations where communication is failing and you want to obtain more details. To adjust the logging verbosity, append more letter v’s; for example, -v, -vv, -vvv, or -vvvv.

Each letter v increases logging verbosity similar to traditional logging levels INFO, WARN, ERROR, DEBUG.

Note

It is a good practice to review the playbook samples before executing them. It will help you understand what requirements in terms of space, location, names, authority, and artifacts will be created and cleaned up. Although samples are always written to operate without the need for the user’s configuration, flexibility is written into the samples because it is not easy to determine if a sample has access to the host’s resources. Review the playbook notes sections for additional details and configuration.

Log and debug

The IBM Power Systems AIX collection uses the standard Ansible log system that is using the syslog subsystem on the managed nodes.

To activate AIX syslog you can update the configuration file /etc/syslog.conf with a selector user.info (or user.debug for more details) such as:

$ vi /etc/syslog.conf
user.info /var/log/syslog.user.info rotate size 1m files 4 compress

and restarting syslogd subsystem and look for Ansible logs:

$ >/var/log/syslog.user.info
$ refresh -s syslogd

$ grep ansible /var/log/syslog.user.info
May  6 03:28:27 nimmaster user:info ansible-nim: Invoked with resource=None force=False description=None script=damien_script lpp_source=None action=script asynchronous=True location=None device=None group=None operation=None targets=['nimclient01']
May  6 03:28:27 nimmaster user:info ansible-nim: *** START ***
...

To see the full debug log messages you should set the selector field to user.debug and run the playbook with the environment variable ANSIBLE_DEBUG=1

$ vi /etc/syslog.conf
user.debug /var/log/syslog.user.debug rotate size 1m files 4 compress
$ >/var/log/syslog.user.debug
$ refresh -s syslogd
$ ANSIBLE_DEBUG=1 ansible-playbook -M plugins/modules ./demo_nim.yml -vvv