linuxexpert-practice-labs/labs/ex294/8-3-installing-collections/README.md

EX294 8.3: Installing collections

Install collections into your project: one from a tarball on a web server, one from Galaxy at a version your ansible-core supports, and one into a directory Ansible doesn't look in.

Before you start

This VM is the control node. The lab creates the user greg (password Lab-Pass-1) and installs ansible-core. Work as greg, in /home/greg/ansible: its ansible.cfg reads the inventory inventory, logs in to the node as devops with greg's SSH key, and becomes root. It doesn't set collections_path yet.

The managed node node1 (10.99.1.11) is an AlmaLinux 10 container running httpd, serving /var/www/html. For a root shell there, sudo podman exec -it node1 bash. The collections come from Ansible Galaxy, so the VM needs internet access.

Tasks

1. Download ansible.posix from Galaxy as a tarball, serve it from node1 under http://node1/collections/, and install it into /home/greg/ansible/collections from a requirements file with type: url. ansible-galaxy collection list shows it under the project's collections directory.
2. Install community.general at a version that works with your ansible-core, and write /home/greg/ansible/ini.yml, which uses its ini_file module to set port = 8080 in the section [web] of /etc/lab.ini on node1. ansible-doc community.general.ini_file works without a warning, and the playbook runs.
3. Install community.crypto with -p /home/greg/elsewhere, a directory that isn't in collections_path. ansible-galaxy warns, and Ansible can't find its modules: ansible-doc community.crypto.openssl_privatekey finds nothing.

Hints

• ansible-galaxy collection download ansible.posix -p DIR, then ansible node1 -m copy to put it under /var/www/html/collections/.
• A collections requirements file starts with collections:; a tarball entry is - name: URL with type: url.
• collections_path = ./collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections in ansible.cfg, then ansible-galaxy collection install -r FILE -p collections.
• ansible --version shows your ansible-core; a collection's meta/runtime.yml has requires_ansible. Galaxy doesn't check it, so pin a version: version: "<12".