Ansible Series - Big Shout Out To Jay!

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Hey All,

Just wanted to say thank you to @Jay for his (Ansible Series). After going through the playlist, I can finally make sense of the Ansible Documentation, and the :bulb: lightbulb has definitely switched on :bulb:

Over the weekend I was looking at K3S uses-cases which turned into an Ansible series for the most part. After going through @Jay’s Ansible Series, I started thinking about all the configurations I do for various projects: different distributions, servers, databases, development tools, framework dependencies, radio related projects, multi-arch C++/C/Fortran compilers, libs, tool chains, and the list goes on and on.

I already have a background in the Ansible template engine (JinJa) from working on Django projects as it too uses, or can use, the JinJa Temple Engine. For me, this is when things started to click. I’m well accustomed to structured folders / modules in Python, so the notion of

/project/roles/<name>/{tasks,handler,templates}

fell right into place. Now it’s just a matter of learning the syntax for Ansible, and organizing things to be the most efficient during roll-outs and subsequent updates.

Anyway, if you do any kind of repetitive installation/configuration, the Ansible Series is a “Must Watch”, even if you only do minor things such as update your disto to the latest patch level.

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Yep, Ansible is a time and frustration saver for anyone who needs to consistently apply and update configurations. My directory full of shell scrips was fragile and time-consuming.

It took me a bit longer than a weekend for things to start to click :frowning: Ironically, I am moving several of my services back to docker. Having installed the services manually, and then ansiblizing them I understand what is happening well enough that dockerfiles are no longer black magic called using obscure incantations.

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I was thrown off a bit when things started shifting to roles, but it started making sense soon after. Another confusing point for me was the need to have an Ansible Control Node (VM, CT, Vagrant Instance, physical box, whatever) that is separate from my Workstation (it’s kinda hard to SSH to yourself … Doooh !! ). Or I should say, there is “no need” to.

After that, things went pretty smooth.