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Ansible Level 02 Day 03: Ansible Archive Module

This document outlines the solution for Ansible Level 02 Day 03. The objective was to use Ansible to compress a specific directory on remote application servers into a tar.gz archive, place it in a new location, and assign specific ownership based on the server.

Table of Contents

Task Overview

Objective: Archive data on all application servers with specific dynamic ownership.

  • Playbook Location: /home/thor/ansible/playbook.yml
  • Inventory Location: /home/thor/ansible/inventory (Already exists)
  • Source Directory: /usr/src/dba/
  • Destination Archive: /opt/dba/official.tar.gz
  • Format: tar.gz
  • Ownership Requirements:
    • App Server 1 (stapp01): tony
    • App Server 2 (stapp02): steve
    • App Server 3 (stapp03): banner
  • Constraint: Must run cleanly using ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml.

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Verify the Environment

Since the inventory file is already provided, it is best practice to quickly review it to ensure it contains the standard connection variables that align with our dynamic ownership requirement.

Command: 

cat /home/thor/ansible/inventory
You should see that stapp01 uses ansible_user=tony, stapp02 uses ansible_user=steve, etc. We will leverage this ansible_user variable in our playbook.

2. Create the Playbook

Create the YAML playbook to utilize the archive module. Because we are reading from /usr/src/ and writing to /opt/, we must use become: yes to execute with root privileges.

We will use the {{ ansible_user }} variable to dynamically satisfy the ownership requirements without writing three separate tasks.

Command: 

vi /home/thor/ansible/playbook.yml

Content: 

---
- name: Archive data on app servers
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Create archive of /usr/src/dba/
      archive:
        path: /usr/src/dba/
        dest: /opt/dba/official.tar.gz
        format: gz
        owner: "{{ ansible_user }}"
        group: "{{ ansible_user }}"

3. Execute and Validate

Run the playbook using the specific command required for validation.

Command: 

cd /home/thor/ansible/
ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml

Expected Output: 

PLAY [Archive data on app servers] ****************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************
ok: [stapp01]
ok: [stapp02]
ok: [stapp03]

TASK [Create archive of /usr/src/dba/] ************************************************
changed: [stapp01]
changed: [stapp02]
changed: [stapp03]

PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************
stapp01                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    ...
stapp02                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    ...
stapp03                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    ...

Manual Verification (Optional): You can verify the file was created and has the correct ownership using an ad-hoc command: 

ansible all -i inventory -m command -a "ls -l /opt/dba/official.tar.gz" --become

Deep Dive: Ansible Concepts Used

The archive Module

The archive module creates a compressed archive of one or multiple files/directories on the target machine. It does not transfer the files back to the controller; it leaves the generated archive on the remote node. * path: The source directory or file to compress. * dest: The absolute path where the archive will be saved. * format: Specifies the compression type. Setting this to gz creates a tar.gz (gzip compressed tarball) file, which matches the required official.tar.gz extension.

Dynamic Variables ({{ ansible_user }})

By defining owner: "{{ ansible_user }}", we instruct Ansible to evaluate the connection user defined for the current host in the inventory file. * When running on stapp01, Ansible connects as tony. It evaluates {{ ansible_user }} to tony and assigns ownership to tony. * When running on stapp02, it evaluates to steve. This prevents us from having to write a clunky playbook with three separate tasks using when conditionals.