linuxexpert-practice-labs/labs/ex294/2-1-ansible-cfg/README.md

EX294 2.1: ansible.cfg

Write a project's ansible.cfg, check what Ansible makes of it, and find a setting that Ansible ignores.

Before you start

This VM is the control node. The lab creates the user greg (password Lab-Pass-1) with an SSH key, and installs ansible-core. Work as greg. His project /home/greg/ansible has an inventory, inventory, listing the managed nodes, but no ansible.cfg yet. A second project, /home/greg/proj2, has an ansible.cfg with a mistake in it.

The managed nodes node1 (10.99.1.11) and node2 (10.99.1.12) are AlmaLinux 10 containers reached over SSH by name. On both, the automation user devops accepts greg's key and may use sudo without a password. For a root shell on a node, sudo podman exec -it node1 bash.

Tasks

1. In /home/greg/ansible, write an ansible.cfg that uses ./inventory, logs in as devops, puts roles in ./roles and collections in ./collections, and becomes root with sudo without asking for a password. ansible-config dump --only-changed shows each setting with your file's path, and ansible all -a whoami prints root for every node.
2. Set forks to 10 in the same file, so ansible-config dump | grep FORKS shows 10.
3. One setting in /home/greg/proj2/ansible.cfg is misspelled, so Ansible ignores it. Find it with ansible-config dump --only-changed (run in /home/greg/proj2) and correct it, so every setting in that file takes effect.

Hints

• [defaults]: inventory, remote_user, roles_path, collections_path, forks, host_key_checking.
• [privilege_escalation]: become, become_method, become_user, become_ask_pass.
• ansible --version names the config file in use; Ansible only reads ./ansible.cfg from the directory you run it in.
• ansible-config init --disabled lists every setting's correct name.