Ansible Playground

Welcome to the Ansible Playground!

Ansible — the agentless automation engine. Write YAML playbooks to configure systems, deploy apps, and orchestrate workflows without installing agents on targets.

What’s Pre-installed

• Ansible (latest from Alpine apk)
• Python 3 with pip
• Shell: bash with vim, nano, git, curl, jq, openssh-client

Quick Start

ansible --version
ansible localhost -m ping -c local

Common Workflows

# Run an ad-hoc command
ansible localhost -m command -a "uname -a" -c local

# Write and run a playbook
cat > playbook.yml <<'EOF'
---
- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  tasks:
    - name: Create a directory
      file:
        path: /tmp/ansible-demo
        state: directory
    - name: Write a file
      copy:
        content: "Hello from Ansible!"
        dest: /tmp/ansible-demo/hello.txt
    - name: Show the file
      command: cat /tmp/ansible-demo/hello.txt
      register: result
    - debug: msg="{{ result.stdout }}"
EOF

ansible-playbook -i localhost, -c local playbook.yml

Advanced Tips

# Use roles for reusability
ansible-galaxy init myrole
ls myrole/

# Dynamic inventory
ansible-inventory --list -i /etc/ansible/hosts

# Vault: encrypt sensitive data
ansible-vault encrypt_string 'mysecret' --name 'db_password'

# Check mode (dry run)
ansible-playbook -i localhost, -c local --check playbook.yml

Session Notes

• Session lasts 1 hour.
• Run against localhost with -c local to avoid needing SSH keys.