linuxexpert-practice-labs/labs/ex294/3-4-deploying-files/README.md

EX294 3.4: Deploying files to managed nodes

Copy a file from the project to the webservers with a backup, make a directory and write a file from inline content, and fetch a file back from every node.

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, in /home/greg/ansible: its ansible.cfg reads the inventory inventory, whose group webservers holds both nodes, logs in as devops and becomes root.

The managed nodes node1 (10.99.1.11) and node2 (10.99.1.12) are AlmaLinux 10 containers reached over SSH by name. On each, devops has greg's key and passwordless sudo, and /etc/issue.net is the old one, owned by ansible with mode 0600. SELinux is off inside the nodes, so ls -lZ shows no etc_t there. For a root shell on a node, sudo podman exec -it node1 bash.

Tasks

1. Deploy /etc/issue.net to the webservers from a file in your project (such as files/issue), owned by root, mode 0644, keeping a backup of the old one. Change the source and run it again: another backup appears.
2. On the webservers, create /srv/app/conf owned by devops with mode 0750, and write app.conf inside it from inline content.
3. Fetch /etc/hostname from every webserver into fetched/ in the project, so that fetched/node1/etc/hostname and fetched/node2/etc/hostname exist on the control node.

Hints

• ansible.builtin.copy with src, dest, owner, group, mode and backup: true; --diff shows what changes.
• ansible.builtin.file with state: directory; copy with content.
• ansible.builtin.fetch with dest: fetched/.
• ansible webservers -a 'stat -c "%U %a" /srv/app/conf' and ansible webservers -a 'ls -l /etc' check your work.