Tasks

Task 1: Working with modules

Based on these examples, add to the initial playbook the following tasks:

  1. File transfer with the module copy

  2. Create a new directory with the module file

  3. Delete a whole directory and files (module file)

  4. Install a list of packages with yum

Task 2: Cobbler configuration in a role

Let’s create the role cobblerd for the master node, this role will contain all necessary tasks to install and configure the cobblerd service. First, add the role to the master.yml file,

---
# file: master.yml

- name: provisioning for master node
  hosts: master

  roles:
    - ntp_server
    - cobblerd
...

Then, create the folders roles/cobblerd, roles/cobblerd/tasks and roles/cobblerd/files. Since the service cobblerd was already configured manually in exercise 3, we can use the same configuration. Save the files /etc/cobbler/settings, /etc/cobbler/*.template, /etc/cobbler/zone_templates/* and /var/lib/cobbler/templates/* into the roles/cobblerd/files folder. After this, create a main.yml file in cobblerd/tasks containing the following tasks (see Exercise 3: Setting up a netboot environment with cobbler for more details):

  • Install EPEL

  • Install Cobbler, dhcp, bind, tftp-server, pykickstart

  • Copy Cobbler setting file into place

  • Copy *.template files into place

  • Copy zone template/* files into place

  • Copy the kickstart/* files into place

  • Enable/start the system services httpd, tftp, named, cobblerd and dhcpd

  • Rebuild the contents of /tftpboot and /var/www/cobbler (i.e. cobbler sync)

Note that the files in roles/cobblerd/files can be used directly by any task in the role, i.e. no absolute path is required in the src declaration. For instance, the Cobbler settings file can be copied into /etc/cobbler/ as follows:

- name: copy cobblerd settings file
  copy:
    src: settings.yaml
    dest: /etc/cobbler/settings.yaml
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: "u=rw,g=r,o=r"
    force: yes

The cobblerd tree directory should then look like this:

[root@master cobblerd]# tree .
.
├── files
│   ├── dhcp.template
│   ├── kickstart.ks
│   ├── named.template
│   ├── settings.yaml
│   └── zone.template
└── tasks
    └── main.yml

Task 3: Managing and propagating local accounts

  1. Add a role to the playbook master.yml (see here) called accounts_creation including the following tasks:

  1. Create a Linux group called hpc_admin using the module group.

  2. Create a user account for you using the module user.

2. Add a role to the compute nodes playbook called accounts_propagation to propagate the user accounts and groups created in master node. Tip: use synchronize.

Task 4: Compile and configure LMOD with ansible

Create the necessary roles to configure LMOD in master and in the compute nodes.

Warning

If you are working on Temple’s resources, and decide to use the option become_user: install make sure to configure the http_proxy and https_proxy variables in the install’s user bashrc:

[install@master ~]$ cat .bashrc
# .bashrc
...
# User specific aliases and functions
export http_proxy='http://172.16.1.1:3128'
export https_proxy='http://172.16.1.1:3128'

Merit Task: Configure a compute node from scratch

Re-image one of the compute nodes and use your ansible roles/playbooks to configure all the services, accounts and software.