Version on Galaxy Testing CI

An Ansible role for preparing a linux system to be managed by ansible.

This role uses the ansible.builtin.raw module in combination with an own-implemented "Operating System determination system" to install the minimum required set of packages (python and sudo) in order to allow Ansible to manage a system.

This role also ensures an up-to-date package cache for most systems.

In most cases, you will want to use this role in combination with my core_dependencies-role.

Note
DISCLAIMER

This role is a fork of robertdebock/ansible-role-bootstrap v5.2.12 (27 January, 2022) (Apache License 2.0, Copyright Robert de Bock (robert@meinit.nl)) with various changes/fixes.
Excerpt of changes from /releases below (with accompanying Issues in robertdebock’s repository):

🔎 Metadata

Below you can find information on…

  • the role’s required Ansible version

  • the role’s supported platforms

  • the role’s role dependencies

meta/main.yml
---
galaxy_info:
  role_name: bootstrap
  description: An ansible role for preparing a linux system to be managed by ansible. Based on robertdebock's role.

  author: jonaspammer
  license: "MIT"

  min_ansible_version: "2.9"
  platforms:
    # note: text after "actively tested: " represent the docker image name
    - name: EL # (Enterprise Linux)
      versions:
        - "9" # actively tested: rockylinux9
    - name: Fedora
      versions:
        - "38" # actively tested: fedora38
        - "39" # actively tested: fedora39
    - name: Debian
      versions:
        - bullseye # actively tested: debian11
        - bookworm # actively tested: debian12
    - name: Ubuntu
      versions:
        - focal # actively tested: ubuntu2004
        - jammy # actively tested: ubuntu2204

  galaxy_tags:
    - bootstrap
    - python
    - sudo

dependencies: []

📌 Requirements

The Ansible User needs to be able to become.

📜 Role Variables

bootstrap_user: root

Username used to connect to the machine for the primary raw tasks of gathering simple facts / installing.

bootstrap_become: false
bootstrap_become_user: root

become and become_user variables passed to most actual tasks.

The default value of bootstrap_become was set to false because of the assumption that sudo is not available before bootstrapping.

bootstrap_wait_for_host: false

Whether to wait for the host to be available on ansible_port (22).

bootstrap_timeout: 3

Maximum number of seconds to wait for the remote system to be reachable/usable before failing.

📜 Facts/Variables defined by this role

Each variable listed in this section is dynamically defined when executing this role (and can only be overwritten using ansible.builtin.set_facts) and is meant to be used not just internally.

🏷️ Tags

Tasks are tagged with the following tags:

Tag Purpose

This role does not have officially documented tags yet.

You can use Ansible to skip tasks, or only run certain tasks by using these tags. By default, all tasks are run when no tags are specified.

👫 Dependencies

📚 Example Playbook Usages

Important

You must disable the gather_facts-property of the play this role is used in. If this role finished successfully it’ll call ansible’s setup module itself (equivalent effect that gather_facts: true would give).

No tasks must come before this role.
Example 1. Minimum Viable Play
---
- hosts: servers:&provisioned
  name: Bootstrap linux machines to be managed by Ansible.
  become: false
  gather_facts: false

  roles:
    - role: jonaspammer.bootstrap
Example 2. Changing bootstrap user (e.g. when root is not an option)
---
- hosts: servers:&provisioned
  name: Bootstrap linux machines to be managed by Ansible.
  become: false
  gather_facts: false

  vars:
    bootstrap_user: "{{ ansible_user }}"

  roles:
    - role: jonaspammer.bootstrap
Example 3. Using become true (e.g. when you know you at-least have an useable sudo)
---
- hosts: servers:&provisioned
  name: Bootstrap linux machines to be managed by Ansible.
  become: true
  gather_facts: false

  vars:
    bootstrap_user: "{{ ansible_user }}"
    bootstrap_become: true

  roles:
    - role: jonaspammer.bootstrap

🧪 Tested Distributions

A role may work on different distributions, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), even though there is no test for this exact distribution.

OS Family Distribution Distribution Release Date Distribution End of Life Accompanying Docker Image

Rocky

Rocky Linux 8 (RHEL/CentOS 8 in disguise)

2021-06

2029-05

CI

Rocky

Rocky Linux 9

2022-07

2032-05

CI

RedHat

Fedora 39

2023-11

2024-12

CI

Debian

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

2021-04

2025-04

CI

Debian

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

2022-04

2027-04

CI

Debian

Debian 11

2021-08

2024-06 (2026-06 LTS)

CI

Debian

Debian 12

2023-06

2026-06 (2028-06 LTS)

CI

🧪 Tested Ansible versions

The tested ansible versions try to stay equivalent with the support pattern of Ansible’s community.general collection. As of writing this is:

  • 2.13 (Ansible 6)

  • 2.14 (Ansible 7)

  • 2.15 (Ansible 8)

  • 2.16 (Ansible 9)

📝 Development

Conventional Commits pre-commit.ci status

📌 Development Machine Dependencies

  • Python 3.10 or greater

  • Docker

📌 Development Dependencies

Development Dependencies are defined in a pip requirements file named requirements-dev.txt. Example Installation Instructions for Linux are shown below:

# "optional": create a python virtualenv and activate it for the current shell session
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate

$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

ℹ️ Ansible Role Development Guidelines

Please take a look at my Ansible Role Development Guidelines.

If interested, I’ve also written down some General Ansible Role Development (Best) Practices.

🔢 Versioning

Versions are defined using Tags, which in turn are recognized and used by Ansible Galaxy.

Versions must not start with v.

When a new tag is pushed, a GitHub CI workflow (Release CI) takes care of importing the role to my Ansible Galaxy Account.

🧪 Testing

Automatic Tests are run on each Contribution using GitHub Workflows.

The Tests primarily resolve around running Molecule on a varying set of linux distributions and using various ansible versions.

The molecule test also includes a step which lints all ansible playbooks using ansible-lint to check for best practices and behaviour that could potentially be improved.

To run the tests, simply run tox on the command line. You can pass an optional environment variable to define the distribution of the Docker container that will be spun up by molecule:

$ MOLECULE_DISTRO=ubuntu2204 tox

For a list of possible values fed to MOLECULE_DISTRO, take a look at the matrix defined in .github/workflows/ci.yml.

🐛 Debugging a Molecule Container

  1. Run your molecule tests with the option MOLECULE_DESTROY=never, e.g.:

    $ MOLECULE_DESTROY=never MOLECULE_DISTRO=ubuntu1604 tox -e py3-ansible-5
...
  TASK [ansible-role-pip : (redacted).] ************************
  failed: [instance-py3-ansible-9] => changed=false
...
 ___________________________________ summary ____________________________________
  pre-commit: commands succeeded
ERROR:   py3-ansible-9: commands failed

  2. Find out the name of the molecule-provisioned docker container:

    $ docker ps
30e9b8d59cdf   geerlingguy/docker-debian12-ansible:latest   "/lib/systemd/systemd"   8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes                                                                                                    instance-py3-ansible-9

  3. Get into a bash Shell of the container, and do your debugging:

    $ docker exec -it 30e9b8d59cdf /bin/bash

root@instance-py3-ansible-2:/#
    Tip

    If the failure you try to debug is part of your verify.yml step and not the actual converge.yml, you may want to know that the output of ansible’s modules (vars), hosts (hostvars) and environment variables have been stored into files on both the provisioner and inside the docker machine under:

    • /var/tmp/vars.yml (contains host variables under the hostvars key)

    • /var/tmp/environment.yml

    grep, cat or transfer these as you wish!
    Tip

    You may also want to know that the files mentioned in the admonition above are attached to the GitHub CI Artifacts of a given Workflow run.
    This allows one to check the difference between runs and thus help in debugging what caused the bit-rot or failure in general.

    178442403 e15264ca 433a 4bc7 95db cfadb573db3c

  4. After you finished your debugging, exit it and destroy the container:

    root@instance-py3-ansible-2:/# exit

$ docker stop 30e9b8d59cdf

$ docker container rm 30e9b8d59cdf
or
$ docker container prune

🐛 Debugging installed package versions locally

Although a standard feature in tox 3, this now only happens when tox recognizes the presence of a CI variable. For example:

$ CI=true tox

🧃 TIP: Containerized Ideal Development Environment

This Project offers a definition for a "1-Click Containerized Development Environment".

This Container even enables one to run docker containers inside of it (Docker-In-Docker, dind), allowing for molecule execution.

To use it:

  1. Ensure you fullfill the the System requirements of Visual Studio Code Development Containers, optionally following the Installation-Section of the linked page section.
    This includes: Installing Docker, Installing Visual Studio Code itself, and Installing the necessary Extension.

  2. Clone the project to your machine

  3. Open the folder of the repo in Visual Studio Code (File - Open Folder…).

  4. If you get a prompt at the lower right corner informing you about the presence of the devcontainer definition, you can press the accompanying button to enter it. Otherwise, you can also execute the Visual Studio Command Remote-Containers: Open Folder in Container yourself (View - Command Palette → type in the mentioned command).

Tip

I recommend using Remote-Containers: Rebuild Without Cache and Reopen in Container once here and there as the devcontainer feature does have some problems recognizing changes made to its definition properly some times.
Note

You may need to configure your host system to enable the container to use your SSH/GPG Keys.

The procedure is described in the official devcontainer docs under "Sharing Git credentials with your container".

🍪 CookieCutter

This Project shall be kept in sync with the CookieCutter it was originally templated from using cruft (if possible) or manual alteration (if needed) to the best extend possible.

Official Example Usage of cruft update
Official Example Usage of `cruft update`

🕗 Changelog

When a new tag is pushed, an appropriate GitHub Release will be created by the Repository Maintainer to provide a proper human change log with a title and description.

ℹ️ General Linting and Styling Conventions

General Linting and Styling Conventions are automatically held up to Standards by various pre-commit hooks, at least to some extend.

Automatic Execution of pre-commit is done on each Contribution using pre-commit.ci*. Pull Requests even automatically get fixed by the same tool, at least by hooks that automatically alter files.

Note

Not to confuse: Although some pre-commit hooks may be able to warn you about script-analyzed flaws in syntax or even code to some extend (for which reason pre-commit’s hooks are part of the test suite), pre-commit itself does not run any real Test Suites. For Information on Testing, see 🧪 Testing.
Tip

Nevertheless, I recommend you to integrate pre-commit into your local development workflow yourself.

This can be done by cd’ing into the directory of your cloned project and running pre-commit install. Doing so will make git run pre-commit checks on every commit you make, aborting the commit themselves if a hook alarm’ed.

You can also, for example, execute pre-commit’s hooks at any time by running pre-commit run --all-files.

💪 Contributing

Open in Visual Studio Code PRs Welcome

The following sections are generic in nature and are used to help new contributors. The actual "Development Documentation" of this project is found under 📝 Development.

Preamble

First off, thank you for considering contributing to this Project.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue, assessing changes, and helping you finalize your pull requests.

🍪 CookieCutter

This Project owns many of its files to the CookieCutter it was originally templated from.

Please check if the edit you have in mind is actually applicable to the template and if so make an appropriate change there instead. Your change may also be applicable partly to the template as well as partly to something specific to this project, in which case you would be creating multiple PRs.

💬 Conventional Commits

A casual contributor does not have to worry about following the spec by definition, as pull requests are being squash merged into one commit in the project. Only core contributors, i.e. those with rights to push to this project’s branches, must follow it (e.g. to allow for automatic version determination and changelog generation to work).

🚀 Getting Started

Contributions are made to this repo via Issues and Pull Requests (PRs). A few general guidelines that cover both:

Issues

Issues should be used to report problems, request a new feature, or to discuss potential changes before a PR is created. When you create a new Issue, a template will be loaded that will guide you through collecting and providing the information we need to investigate.

If you find an Issue that addresses the problem you’re having, please add your own reproduction information to the existing issue rather than creating a new one. Adding a reaction can also help be indicating to our maintainers that a particular problem is affecting more than just the reporter.

Pull Requests

PRs to this Project are always welcome and can be a quick way to get your fix or improvement slated for the next release. In general, PRs should:

  • Only fix/add the functionality in question OR address wide-spread whitespace/style issues, not both.

  • Add unit or integration tests for fixed or changed functionality (if a test suite already exists).

  • Address a single concern

  • Include documentation in the repo

  • Be accompanied by a complete Pull Request template (loaded automatically when a PR is created).

For changes that address core functionality or would require breaking changes (e.g. a major release), it’s best to open an Issue to discuss your proposal first.

In general, we follow the "fork-and-pull" Git workflow

  1. Fork the repository to your own Github account

  2. Clone the project to your machine

  3. Create a branch locally with a succinct but descriptive name

  4. Commit changes to the branch

  5. Following any formatting and testing guidelines specific to this repo

  6. Push changes to your fork

  7. Open a PR in our repository and follow the PR template so that we can efficiently review the changes.

🗒 Changelog

Please refer to the Release Page of this Repository for a human changelog of the corresponding Tags (Versions) of this Project.

Note that this Project adheres to Semantic Versioning. Please report any accidental breaking changes of a minor version update.

⚖️ License

LICENSE
MIT License

Copyright (c) 2022, Jonas Pammer

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.