Quickstart

After installing the collection outlined in the installation guide, you can access the collection and the ansible-doc covered in the following topics:

ibm.power_aix

After the collection is installed, you can access the collection content for a playbook by referencing the namespace ibm and the collection’s fully qualified name power_aix. For example:

- hosts: all

tasks:
- name: Query and install latest updates
  ibm.power_aix.suma:
      oslevel: 'latest'

In Ansible 2.9, the collections keyword was added to reduce the need to refer to the collection repeatedly. For example, you can use the collections keyword in your playbook:

- hosts: all
  collections:
  - ibm.power_aix

tasks:
- name: Query and install latest updates
  suma:
      oslevel: 'latest'

ansible user

Some modules included in this collection perform privileged operations. Only authorized users can run privileged operations. It is recommended to create an ansible user with a the proper roles on the system.

For example the alt_disk module runs alt_disk_copy and alt_rootvg_op commands that require aix.system.install authorization, and chpv command that requires aix.lvm.manage.change authorization.

You can get the list of commands run as part of the alt_disk module with:

# awk -F\' '/cmd =/ {print $2}' .ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix/plugins/modules/alt_disk.py | sort -u

Then on your managed node running AIX, you can use the following to define an ansible_backup role with the proper authorizations and create an ansible user owning this role:

# cmds="alt_disk_copy getconf lquerypv lspv lsvg /usr/sbin/alt_rootvg_op /usr/sbin/chpv"
# for cmd in $cmds; do lssecattr -c `which $cmd`; done
# mkrole authorizations=aix.system.install,aix.lvm.manage.change dfltmsg="Ansible Role for bakcup" ansible_backup
# mkuser roles=ansible_backup default_roles=ansible_backup ansible
# setkst

Note that the mkrole command is itself a privileged command. Hence you must assume a role that has the aix.security.role.create authorization to run the command successfully.

To connect to the endpoint using this ansible user, specify user: ansible in the playbook or ansible_user=ansible in the inventory.

For more information on using authorizations and privileges, refer to the IBM RBAC documentation.

When a user is not authorized to run a privileged operations, it will get a error message such as: alt_disk_copy: cannot execute.

ansible-doc

Modules included in this collection provide additional documentation that is similar to a UNIX-like operating system man page (manual page). This documentation can be accessed from the command line by using the ansible-doc command.

Here’s how to use the ansible-doc command after you install the IBM Power Systems AIX collection: ansible-doc ibm.power_aix.suma

> SUMA    (/Users/user/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix/plugins/modules/suma.py)

    Creates a task to automate the download and installation of
    technology level (TL) and service packs (SP) from a fix server
    using the Service Update Management Assistant (SUMA).

* This module is maintained by The Ansible Community
OPTIONS (= is mandatory):

For more information on using the ansible-doc command, refer to the Ansible guide.