linuxexpert-practice-labs/labs/ex294/4-2-finding-modules

EX294 4.2: Finding modules with ansible-navigator

Browse the collections in an execution environment, use a module from its documentation, and see a module that only the image has.

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 and ansible-navigator (from PyPI, in /opt/le-lab-navigator). Work as greg, in /home/greg/ansible: its ansible.cfg reads the inventory inventory, logs in as devops and becomes root, and its ansible-navigator.yml uses the execution environment image localhost/lab-ee:2.16 in stdout mode. The image is built on this VM from AlmaLinux 10's ansible-core with the ansible.posix and community.general collections from Ansible Galaxy; the control node itself has only ansible-core's own modules.

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, 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.

The nodes have no disks of their own, so storage work goes to this VM: the inventory group storage holds control, which is this VM reached over SSH at 10.99.1.1 (inside the execution environment, localhost is the container, not this VM). There too devops accepts greg's key and may use sudo without a password. The VM has a spare disk, /dev/loop41.

Tasks

1. List the collections in the execution environment and find the module that manages SELinux booleans. Write its full name to /root/lab-answers/1 (as root).
2. Read community.general.lvg's documentation from the image, and write a playbook in /home/greg/ansible with a task that creates the volume group data on /dev/loop41 for the storage group. Run it with ansible-navigator run; vgs on this VM shows data.
3. Find a module that's in the image but not on the control node, and write /home/greg/ansible/both.yml, a playbook that uses it. Run it both ways: navigator succeeds, ansible-playbook fails with "couldn't resolve module/action".

Hints

• ansible-navigator collections -m interactive browses them; in stdout mode it prints every plugin as YAML, so pipe it through grep. ansible-navigator doc -l, ansible-navigator doc NAME.
• Use modules by their full name, namespace.collection.module.
• ansible-doc -l lists what the control node has.