source: main/waeup-ansible/README.rst @ 14226

=============================================
 Playbooks for administrating WAeUP servers.
=============================================

These are materials to use with our servers.

For starters: the tutorial given on

  https://github.com/leucos/ansible-tuto

is a really nice hands-on intro to `ansible`. Please read it!

Vagrant
=======

In `Vagrantfile` we set up a vagrant environment which provides three
hosts as virtualbox:

  ``vh5.sample.org``, ``vh6.sample.org``, ``vh7.sample.org``

running Ubuntu 14.04. ``vh5`` represents "virtual host 5" and should
reflect h5.waeup.org. The same holds for ``vh6`` and ``vh7``
accordingly.

The three virtual hosts are for testing any upcoming ansible
playbooks. They should be used before running playbooks on the real
hosts!


Initialize Vagrant Env
----------------------

You must have `vagrant` installed, if possible in a fairly recent
version. I (uli) use `vagrant 1.8.1` (latest as time of writing).  As
Ubuntu 14.04 is pretty outdated in that respect, I had to grab a .deb
package from

  https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

that could be installed with::

 $ sudo dpkg -i vagrant_1.8.1_x86_64.deb


When everything is in place, change into this directory and run::

  $ vagrant up
  Bringing machine 'vh5' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
  Bringing machine 'vh6' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
  Bringing machine 'vh7' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
  ==> vh5: Importing base box 'ubuntu/trusty32'...
  ...

This will fetch Vagrant virtualbox images for trusty32, i.e. Ubuntu
14.04 images, 32bit version (plays nice also on 64bit hosts).

When hosts are being supplied by Hetzner or another hosting provider,
then we normally get access as `root` user only. Therefore, After base
init the root accounts of all hosts are enabled with password
``vagrant``. This is done by the ansible playbook in
``vagrant-provision.yml``.

All three hosts provide ssh access via::

  $ vagrant ssh vh0

or equivalent commands. They have a user 'vagrant' installed, which
can sudo without password.

After install all three hosts can also be accessed as `root` using
password `vagrant` (for example vh5):

  $ ssh -l root 192.168.36.10

See ``Vagrantfile`` for the IP addresses set.

You can halt (all) the virtual hosts with::

  $ vagrant halt



Ansible Environment
===================

The ansible environment should provide ansible roles and playbooks for
WAeUP related server administration.

The general file-layout and naming should follow

  https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_best_practices.html#directory-layout


Bootstrapping - Freshmechs
--------------------------

We call those machines "freshmech" that are freshly delivered from the
hosting provider or that were freshly provisioned by `vagrant` (see
above).

These machines are expected to have only a single root account and
normally a (security-wise) poor SSH configuration.

Bootstrapping these machines means we secure SSH, restart the SSH
daemon and then add important accounts: "uli", "henrik", "ansible".

To make sure, the connection to a "freshmech" works, you should at
least one time login via SSH before proceeding with ansible and all
bells and whistles::

  ssh -l root 192.168.36.10

(with the real IP of the machine you want to reach, of course).

Any host you want to "bootstrap" must be entered in a local hosts
file, normally ``hosts-virtual``, with a line like this:

  [yet-untouched]
  vh5.sample.org ansible_host=192.168.36.10 ansible_user=root

in the "yet-untouched" section.

Afterwards try:

  $ ansible-playbook -i hosts-virtual --ask-pass bootstrap.yml

The ``ask-pass`` parameter is needed to enter the password given by
the provider on the commandline. For the local `vagrant` machines this
will be `vagrant`.

If run on local virtual machines, you might want to make sure that
your local `known_hosts` file does not contain an old ssh host
fingerprint. Otherwise you have to remove entries for::

  192.168.36.10
  192.168.36.11
  192.168.36.12

respectively before running `bootstrap.yml`.

Alternatively you can run everything with the
`ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING` environment variable set to ``False``::

  $ ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False  ansible-playbook -i hosts-virtual --ask-pass bootstrap.yml

This will suppress host fingerprint checking.