1. Prerequisites

All the examples that follow will assume that the environment described in this section is configured.

It is expected that a Proxmox cluster with a node having the name px-node-I is set up.

(NOTE: if named differently should be edited in the .env.* files mentioned below).

It is also assumed that vnet was created in SDN VLAN 3 zone on linux bridge vmbr0, its name is v3.

(NOTE: LAN 3 should be set up in OPNsense according to the instruction provided at lesson 29).

There are at least 2 ways to create necessary VMs for the environment: a) automatic and b) manual

Fully-automatic environment creation (Ubuntu as well as Arch instead of Manjaro)

Preliminary actions

• Get cloud-init scripts on the Proxmox node mentioned above:

apt install git
git clone https://github.com/Alliedium/awesome-linux-config.git

If you already have the repository, make sure your version is the latest one:

cd ./awesome-linux-config
git pull

• SSH key must be placed here: /root/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit.pub

• Create resource pool:

  pvesh create /pools --poolid ansible-pool
  

• Go to the git directory you've cloned from git:

cd ./awesome-linux-config/proxmox7/cloud-init/

Creating config VM

If you are going to use a Windows machine as config, you need to create a Linux VM on it, so you would be able to install Ansible. You will need Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Run Windows PowerShell as administrator:

wsl --install -d ubuntu

Then run the ubuntu shell.

Otherwise, if you are going to create a separate VM in Proxmox as a config machine, please follow the following steps:

• Copy & edit (if necessary) .env.control (from this repository!)
• Apply env:

set -a; source ./.env.control; set +a

• Run image download:

./download-cloud-init-images.sh

• Run image customization:

./customize-cloud-init-images.sh

• Create ubuntu template:

./create-template.sh

• Create control node:

./create-vms.sh

Creating VMs through Cloud Init scripts

Other steps are to be done both for the cases when WSL is used and when a separate config VM in Proxmox was created.

• Copy & edit (if necessary) .env.ubuntu (from this repository!)
• Apply env:

set -a; source ./.env.ubuntu; set +a

• Create 3 ubuntu nodes:

./create-vms.sh

NOTE: before starting the VMs go to CloudInit tab on Proxmox UI and edit username to be suser2 on hosts: 10.3.1.22, 10.3.1.23.

• Copy & edit (if necessary) .env.arch (from this repository!)
• Apply env:

set -a; source ./.env.arch; set +a

• Run image download:

./download-cloud-init-images.sh

• Create arch template:

./create-template.sh

• Create 2 arch nodes:

./create-vms.sh

NOTE: before starting the VMs go to CloudInit tab on Proxmox UI and edit username to be suser2 on host: 10.3.1.32.

Manual VM creation (Manjaro)

Follow the Manjaro installation steps from lesson 22

Necessary VM parameters: Disk size = 20 GiB, RAM = 3072 MiB (3 GiB) RAM size

NOTE: Before converting the VM to template, you will need to copy ssh public key from the Proxmox node shell. In order to be able to make it, first enable sshd:

sudo systemctl enable sshd --now

Then edit sshd_config file on your Manjaro VM:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config 

Make sure following parameters are not commented:

Port 22
PubkeyAuthentication yes
PasswordAuthentication yes

In the case you had made any changes run:

sudo systemctl restart sshd

Then establish the connection from the node via ssh (you will be asked to enter password):

ssh <manjaro-user>@<manjaro-ip>

Then run ssh-copy-id as following (you will be asked to enter password):

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit.pub <manjaro-user>@<manjaro-ip>

Now you are ready to convert the machine to template. Further, please create a linked clone basing on this template, connect it to VLAN 3 and set a static IP address via nmtui tool. According to the hosts.yml, the address is 10.3.1.41/24, gateway and DNS server are set to 10.3.1.1. In case your manjaro's address is different, make sure you change it within the inventory.

Setting up config machine

1. Prepare config machine

• Copy private ssh key onto it. To make this run the following command from the machine you have generated your key (same one you use on cloud-init VMs creation)

scp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit  <username>@<ip address>:~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit

You might need to change permissions for the file:

chmod 400 ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit

or

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cloudinit

2. Install the latest version of Ansible

sudo apt remove ansible || true
sudo apt --purge autoremove
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible
ansible --version

2. General notes on creating your own custom inventory and playbooks

• In order to organize your Ansible-related files create directory named ansible as below:

mkdir ansible
cd ./ansible
mkdir inventory
mkdir playbooks
cd ./inventory
mkdir cloud-init-vms

• Let's create hosts.yml file

nano ./hosts.yml

• Let's see the list of hosts and their variables using the ansible-inventory command, which is used to display or dump the configured inventory as Ansible sees it:

ansible-inventory -i <path to hosts.yml> --list

• Check connectivity with hosts:

ansible all -m ping -i inventory

• After playbooks are created, it is possible to check them via Ansible linter. It can be installed by as follows on Debian (some other options are available at Installing section of the official documentation):

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y ansible-lint

After this the linter can by launched by

ansible-lint

To list all the rules that are checked by the linter please execute the following command:

ansible-lint -L

3. Playbook examples

Example	Details
Example 1	ping.yml pings hosts and prints facts; contains multiple hosts examples: range, ungrouped, grouped
Example 2	update.yml updates available packages using package manager depending on OS; qemu-guest-agent.yml installs qemu-guest-agent using apt module; qemu-guest-agent_package.yml installs qemu-guest-agent using package module
Example 3	change-hostnames-simple-cidf.yml updates hostnames and edits cloud.cfg to preserve hostnames where necessary (detecting cloud-init image-generated VMs using cloud_init_data_facts); change-hostnames-simple-stat.yml updates hostnames and edit cloud.cfg to preserve hostnames if such file exists (using stat for detection); change-hostnames-composite-stat.yml and change-hostnames-composite-cidf.yml do the same thing but using group_vars and host_vars to compose the new hostname
Example 4	prep-ubuntu4k3s.yml configures Ubuntu machines: installs and starts qemu-guest-agent, removes snap, updates NTP servers
Example 5	install-4server-all.yml configures Manjaro and Arch machines: removes snap, updates packages, installs git, yay, pacman-cli, enables AUR, installs pigz & pbzip2
Example 6	install-4server-all.yml configures Manjaro and Arch machines using custom roles
Example 7	sysadmin-users.yml and install-server-stuff-user.yaml configure Manjaro and Arch machines for users using loops for include_role and become_user for import_role