Install Ansible in CentOS 7

Ansible is used to configure Windows and Linux computers with scripts. If you perform all configuration through Ansible scripts, you can set up a new computer with the same configuration as before, without repeating the work.

Prerequisites

"Download Computer": An Internet-connected computer to download the Ansible software and Python packages.

"Control Machine": A computer with CentOS 7 or other Red Hat 7 compatible Linux, and these "yum" packages:

• • python

  • python-setuptools

  • python-devel

  • openssl-devel

  • git

  • sshd

"Managed Node": One or more computers to configure.

• • SSH access or

  • PowerShell access

Install CentOS packages

Install the libffi package:

sudo yum install libffi

Download

We'll use pip to download ansible and all python prerequisites.

Download pip in a Linux environment:

curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

sudo python get-pip.py

Download the Python packages and Ansible:

pip download virtualenv

pip download pip

pip download wheel

pip download ansible

Download the latest Ansible package, which contains example configuration files:

curl -O http://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-latest.tar.gz

Transfer files to the control machine:

• • *.whl

  • *.tar.gz

Installing

Connect to the control machine by SSH.

Install pip to the system, using the local packages:

sudo python get-pip.py --no-index --find-links=.

Install virtualenv to the system, using pip:

sudo pip install --no-index --find-links=. virtualenv

Create a new virtualenv for Ansible:

virtualenv --system-site-packages ansible

Use the new virtualenv:

source ansible/bin/activate

Install Ansible using pip

pip install --no-index --find-links=. ansible

If you receive errors, check that all prerequisite packages have been installed to the control machine.

Now the Ansible binary is installed in the ansible/bin/ directory.

Configuration

Extract the latest Ansible package:

tar xvfz ansible-latest.tar.gz

Copy the example hosts and ansible.cfg files:

cp -p ansible-*/examples/* ansible/

Edit the hosts file to include the managed nodes

cd ansible

vi hosts

Add machine names or IP addresses under groups, and save the file. Example below:

# Unorganized machines

node1

# Minecraft servers

[minecraft]

node1

# IRC clients

[irc]

node1

Edit the Ansible configuration file

vi ansible.cfg

Add some entries under [defaults], and save the file

inventory = ./hosts

log_path = ./ansible.log

References

I used the following links to learn how to do this:

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2016/04/30/installing-ansible-in-virtualenv/

http://joeyoung.io/ansible-installation-on-centos-7-workarounds/