Tag: Ansible

Ansible automation tool

Unreachable Host: port unreachable

Unreachable Host: port unreachable : port unreachable

I do have access to ssh into the destination machine, and it works, but whenever I run this playbook, I get this error output:

sudo ansible-playbook test.yml PLAY [web] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** fatal: [machine]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password,keyboard-interactive).\r\n", "unreachable": true} to retry, use: --limit @/ansible-play/test.retry PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** machine : ok=0 changed=0 unreachable=1 failed=0

Solution 1:

Try to check the SSH arguments and I used below, and it helps me sometime.

#ansible-playbook --user=brines -vvv test.yml

Solution 2:

Invalid SSH Configuration also may lead this issue. So, hvae to fix the SSH configuration issue or copy & paste the ssh keys on concern hosts.

#cd /root/.ssh 
#ssh-keygen -t rsa

save key under the name of id_rsa

#cat id_rsa.pub

copy the entire key and paste in file (of master node located at path: /.ssh/ or /root/.ssh) as:

#vi authorized_keys

Then run this to check:

#ansible all -m ping -u brines

Output should be like this:

master-node | SUCCESS => { "changed": false, "ping": "pong" }

 

How to create Incident in Service Now using ansible?

Overview

Faster delivery can result in improved support and for stakeholder satisfaction, faster delivery and improved productivity will be the most important thing while automating any service and it is very much satisfied here.

 We can do below operations in Service Now using ansible

         Updating incidents, problems, and change requests

         Updating the Service Now configuration management database (CMDB)

         Using the CMDB as an inventory source  

In this post will demonstrate, how to manage incidents.

First, we need install the collation to handle any service and here we need to install.

servicenow.itsm collection to manage service servicenow through ansible.

Install Service Now collection using below command:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install servicenow.itsm

Once the collection installed, then we have access to below modules:

  1. servicenow.itsm.incident for managing incident tickets
  2. servicenow.itsm.problem for interacting with problems
  3. servicenow.itsm.change_request for handling changes
  4. servicenow.itsm.configuration_item for managing the CMDB
  5. servicenow.itsm.now Inventory plugin and it allows us to use CMDB as an inventory source.

To display the documents of each module use below command

$ ansible-doc servicenow.itsm.incident

Credentials and Service Now declaration:

Before managing incident, we should tell ansible where our ServiceNow instance available and what credentials to be used.

Create inc_vars.yml file and mention instance & credentials as variables like below

---
#snow_record variables
sn_username: admin
sn_password: mypassword@123
sn_instance: snow_host

#data variables
sn_severity: 2
sn_priority: 2

Now that we have our credentials variables ready to use in playbook and we need to create a playbook to create new incident.

Create inc_new.yml and add below codes and save & exit

---
- host: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: create new incident
      servicenow.itsm.incident
        state: new
        username: "{{ sn_username }}"
        password: "{{ sn_password }}"
        instance: "{{ sn_instance }}"
        
        data:
          severity: "{{ sn_severity }}"
          priority: "{{ sn_priority }}"
          short_description: demo incident
   register: new_incident
 - debug:
     var: new_incident.record
Now run this playbook using below  and it will create a new incident
#ansible-playbook inc_new.yml

How to Install Ansible on RHEL 9?

Ansible is a free and open-source automation tool and it is available in default package repository/App Stream and no need any special repository to be enabled.

Step 1: Install ansible using dnf command

#dnf install -y ansible-core

Once installed, very its version by running below command and we can say this as verifiting whether the ansible or not in our server.

#ansible –version

We can check this by executing something over remote servers using this ansible server. For that, first we need ssh to be enabled between Ansible and remote server. Please use the below link to know how to configure ssh in linux?

How to patch linux servers using ansible

How to patch linux servers using ansible

Ansible is opensource automation tool and will see how to patch linux servers using ansible in this post.

We are going to use RedHat Linux 7.3 Operating System in this practical.

Requirements:
1. Linux Host Installed with Ansible and Yum repository configured with httpd.
2. Linux Host Installed with RHEL 7.4 -> Node machine
3. Since Ansible requires SSH enabled between ansible master and node and don’t have node package, Make sure SSH connection established between Master and node.

Configuring yum repository for patching:
  1. browse https://access.redhat.com/ and login with valid credentials.
  2. Click on Security -> Security Advisories and downlod the necessary packages.
  3. Copy those packages to yum repository where all existing packages are available in Linux host. I downloaded and copied kernel update in my repository.
 
# yum list all | grep 3.10.0-1062.el7
kernel.x86_64                            3.10.0-1062.el7                @yum_repo
kernel-headers.x86_64                    3.10.0-1062.el7          yum_repo
kernel-devel.x86_64                      3.10.0-1062.el7          yum_repo
kernel-tools.x86_64                      3.10.0-1062.el7          yum_repo
kernel-tools-libs.x86_64                 3.10.0-1062.el7          yum_repo

4. Run createrepo, “yum clean all” & “yum makecache” commands to update the repository along with new RPM’s.

Now the repository is ready for patching.

Ansible playbook for Linux patching:
  1. Login to Ansible Host and change directory to /etc/ansible
#cd /etc/ansible

2. create playbook called “patching.yml” with below content

# vi patching.yml
---
- name: Patch Linux system
  hosts: Linux_Servers
  become: true
  ignore_errors: yes
  tasks:
- name: Copy the Kernel Patch Repo File
  copy:
    src: /etc/yum.repos.d/yum.repo
    dest: /etc/yum.repos.d/
- name: Apply patches
  yum:
     name: kernel
     state: latest

3. Edit /etc/ansible/hosts file and provide Linux hosts which needs to be patched and mention group as “Linux_Servers” for those hosts. Host group name has been mentioned in playbook in “hosts: Linux_Servers” portion.

# cat /etc/ansible/hosts
[Linux_Servers]
client.lbc.com

4. Now run the playbook from Ansible host and make SSH connection established between master and client.

# ansible-playbook patching.yml
Before kernel patching:

# uname -a
Linux client.lbc.com 3.10.0-862.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Mar 21 18:14:51 EDT 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

After kernel Patching:

# uname -a
Linux client.lbc.com 3.10.0-1062.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Jul 18 20:25:13 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

We successfuly completed kernel patching. Reference:

Introduction of Ansible automation tool

We are going to see Introduction of Ansible automation tool in this post. By reading the future post you can learn full ansible automation and it’s purely based on RedHat Linux.

Ansible is written by Micheal DeHaan

What is Ansible?

It’s a simple IT automation and powerful configuration management tool which is written in python.

It’s an open source configuration management tool.

We can standardize our environment configuration from one server to all other remote servers using ansible by creating the playbooks to complete that task.

Mainly it’s agentless automation tool. Work is pushed to the remote host when the ansible executed.

What we can do:

  • Configuration of Servers
  • Application Deployments
  • Continuous testing of existing application
  • Provisioning
  • Orchestration
  • Automating our administration tasks

 

What we cannot do:

  • We cannot install the initial minimum installation of the system.
  • We cannot monitor the servers
  • It will not track what changes are made over the files on the system.

How the Ansible work:

 

Introduction of Ansible automation tool

Ansible Syntax (or) ansible adhoc command:

Ex:

#Ansible -m command -a "uptime" Test

 

Ansible:- Keyword

m:- Module

command:- Module Name

uptime:-  OSCommand

Test:- Target server Group

 

Ansible Features:

  • Easy to learn
  • Written in python
  • Agentless
  • YAML based playbooks
  • Ansible Galaxy

Ansible Modules:

It’s having 1375 modules. For each and every operation we need to use modules to run the commands.

So we should understand the modules to do automation.