The instructions provided here is used to setup Ansible for managing other systems. A unique characteristic of Ansible is that is does not require a centralized management model. Although the instructions are general, the dependency names are specific to Ubuntu.

Installation on the Ansible server

Using pip

Ansible 2.1

pip install --upgrade pip virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
virtualenv ansible2.1
source ansible2.1/bin/activate
pip install ansible==2.1
pip install redis

Ansible 2.0

pip install --upgrade pip virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
virtualenv ansible2.0
source ansible2.0/bin/activate
pip install ansible==2.0.1.0
pip install redis

Ansible 1.9

pip install --upgrade pip virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
virtualenv ansible1.9
source ansible1.9/bin/activate
pip install ansible==1.9.4
pip install redis

Using Git

git clone git://github.com/ansible/ansible.git

Switch to version 1.9

git checkout stable-1.9
source ansible/hacking/env-setup

Installation on a Mac

One could just simply brew install Ansible, but it does not always set up the system to run Ansible correctly. If while running Ansible an error is displayed regarding logs or permissions, run the following:

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/ansible
sudo touch /var/log/ansible/ansible.log
sudo chown -R ${USER}:wheel /var/log/ansible
sudo chmod 775 /var/log/ansible
sudo chmod 774 /var/log/ansible/ansible.log

Download ansible.cfg

Fresh copy without changes

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/ansible.cfg

Then one might consider changing the following default parameters:

Update hostfile

hostfile       = inventories/hosts

Our version of ansible.cfg

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cyverse/ansible-tips-and-tricks/master/ansible.cfg

wget -O <path-to-ansible-dir>/ansible.cfg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cyverse/ansible-tips-and-tricks/master/ansible.cfg

Installing on Ubuntu

Simply install using apt then run Python VirtualEnv

sudo apt-get install ansible

Then follow the procedure in the first section of this document

Troubleshooting SSH Connections

Sometimes when attempting an initial Ansible ping, it can fail in a very confusing way. If this happens, try adding something like this to your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host <hostname-prefix>*
  Port 22
  User <ssh-login-username>
  StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Where anything between < > needs to be changed.