This morning I was asked by a friend if I could share any Ansible roles we use at $WORK for our Red Hat Atomic Host servers.  It was a relatively easy task to review and sanitize our configs – Atomic Hosts are so minimal, there’s almost nothing we have to do to configure them.

When our Atomic hosts are initially created, they’re minimally configured via cloud-init to setup networking and add a root user ssh key.  (We have a VMWare environment, so we use the RHEL Atomic .ova provided by Red Hat, and mount an ISO with the cloud-init ‘user-data’ and ‘metadata’ files to be read by cloud-init.).  Once that’s done, we run Ansible tasks from a central server to setup the rest of the Atomic host.

Below is a snippit of most of the playbook.

I think the variables are self-explanatory.   Some notes are added to explain why we’re doing a particular thing.  The disk partitioning is explained in more detail in a previous post of mine.

---
  # Set w/Ansible because cloud-init is plain text
  - name: Access | set root password
    user:
      name: root
      password: "{{ root_password }}"

  - name: Access | add ssh user keys
    authorized_key:
      user: "{{ item.name }}"
      key: "{{ item.key }}"
    with_items: "{{ ssh_users }}"

  - name: Access | root access to cron
    lineinfile:
      dest: /etc/security/access.conf
      line: "+:root:cron crond"

  - name: Access | fail closed
    lineinfile:
      dest: /etc/security/access.conf
      line: "-:ALL:ALL"

  # docker-storage-setup service re-configures LVM
  # EVERY TIME Docker service starts, eventually
  # filling up disk with millions of tiny files
  - name: Disks | disable lvm archives
    copy:
      src: lvm.conf
      dest: /etc/lvm/lvm.conf
    notify:
      - restart lvm2-lvmetad

  - name: Disks | expand vg with extra disks
    lvg:
      vg: '{{ volume_group }}'
      pvs: '{{ default_pvs }}'

  - name: Disks | expand the lvm
    lvol:
      vg: '{{ volume_group }}'
      lv: '{{ root_lv }}'
      size: 15g

  - name: Disks | grow fs for root
    filesystem:
      fstype: xfs
      dev: '{{ root_device }}'
      resizefs: yes

  - name: Disks | create srv lvm
    lvol:
      vg: '{{ volume_group }}'
      lv: '{{ srv_lv }}'
      size: 15g

  - name: Disks | format fs for srv
    filesystem:
      fstype: xfs
      dev: '{{ srv_device }}'
      resizefs: no

  - name: Disks | mount srv
    mount:
      name: '{{ srv_partition }}'
      src: '{{ srv_device }}'
      fstype: xfs
      state: mounted
      opts: 'defaults'

  ## This is a workaround for XFS bug (only grows if mounted)
  - name: Disks | grow fs for srv
    filesystem:
      fstype: xfs
      dev: '{{ srv_device }}'
      resizefs: yes

  ## Always check this, or it will try to do it each time
  - name: Disks | check if swap exists
    stat:
      path: '{{ swapfile }}'
      get_checksum: no
      get_md5: no
    register: swap

  - debug: var=swap.stat.exists

  - name: Disks | create swap lvm
   ## Shrink not supported until 2.2
   #lvol: vg=atomicos lv=swap size=2g shink=no
    lvol:
      vg: atomicos
      lv: swap
      size: 2g

  - name: Disks |make swap file
    command: mkswap '{{ swapfile }}'
    when:
      - swap.stat.exists == false

  - name: Disks | add swap to fstab
    lineinfile:
      dest: /etc/fstab
      regexp: "^{{ swapfile }}"
      line: "{{ swapfile }}  none    swap    sw    0   0"

  - name: Disks | swapon
    command: swapon '{{ swapfile}}'
    when: ansible_swaptotal_mb < 1

  - name: Docker | setup docker-storage-setup
    lineinfile:
      dest: /etc/sysconfig/docker-storage-setup
      regexp: ^ROOT_SIZE=
      line: "ROOT_SIZE=15G"
      register: docker-storage-setup

  - name: Docker | setup docker-network
    lineinfile:
      dest: /etc/sysconfig/docker-network
      regexp: ^DOCKER_NETWORK_OPTIONS=
      line: >
        'DOCKER_NETWORK_OPTIONS=-H unix:///var/run/docker.sock
        -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2376
        --tlsverify
        --tlscacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca.crt
        --tlscert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/host.crt
        --tlskey=/etc/pki/tls/private/host.key'

  - name: add CA certificate
    copy:
      src: ca.crt
      dest: /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca.crt
      owner: root
      group: root
      mode: 0644

  - name: Admin Helpers | thinpool wiper script
    copy:
      src: wipe_docker_thinpool.sh
      dest: /usr/local/bin/wipe_docker_thinpool.sh
      mode: 0755

  - name: Journalctl | set journal sizes
    copy:
      src: journald.conf
      dest: /etc/systemd/journald.conf
      mode: 0644
    notify:
      - restart systemd-journald

  - name: Random Atomic Bugfixes | add lastlog
    file:
      path: /var/log/lastlog
      state: touch

  - name: Random Atomic Bugfixes | add root bashrc for prompt
    copy:
      src: root-bashrc
      dest: /root/.bashrc
      mode: 0644

  - name: Random Atomic Bugfixes | add root bash_profile for .bashrc
    copy:
      src: root-bash_profile
      dest: /root/.bash_profile
      mode: 0644

  ### Disable Cloud Init ###
  ## These are in Ansible 2.2, which we don't have yet
  - name: stop cloud-config
    systemd: name=cloud-config state=stopped enabled=no masked=yes
    ignore_errors: yes

  - name: stop cloud-init
    systemd: name=cloud-init state=stopped enabled=no masked=yes
    ignore_errors: yes

  - name: stop cloud-init-local
    systemd: name=cloud-init-local state=stopped enabled=no masked=yes
    ignore_errors: yes

  - name: stop cloud-final
    systemd: name=cloud-final state=stopped enabled=no masked=yes
    ignore_errors: yes

  - name: Find old cloud-init files if they exist
    shell: rm -f /etc/init/cloud-*
    ignore_errors: yes

The only other tasks we run are related to $WORK specific stuff (security office scanning, patching user account for automated updates, etc).

One of the beneficial side-effects of mixing cloud-init and Ansible is that the cloud-init is only used for the initial setup (networking and root access), so it ends up being under the size limit imposed by Amazon Web Services on their user-data files.  This allows us to create and maintain RHEL Atomic hosts in AWS using the exact same cloud-init user-data file and Ansible roles.

Photo by Heather Gill on Unsplash