interactive

Interactive Ansible Development

Interactive development builds automation incrementally with continuous validation. Each component is tested before adding the next. This catches errors early when they're easy to diagnose.

Verify Ansible is installed: ansible --version

mkdir ansible-project && cd ansible-project

Create ansible.cfg:

[defaults]
inventory = ./inventory
host_key_checking = False
stdout_callback = yaml

[privilege_escalation]
become = True
become_method = sudo

Create inventory:

[webservers]
web1 ansible_host=192.168.1.10 ansible_user=admin ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa

[dbservers]
db1 ansible_host=192.168.1.20 ansible_user=admin ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa

ansible all -m ping

Interpret results:

• SUCCESS: Proceed to playbooks
• UNREACHABLE: Check ssh -v user@host
• Permission denied: Verify key path, permissions (600)
• Sudo password required: Add --ask-become-pass or configure NOPASSWD

Create playbook.yml starting with facts:

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: Show OS info
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "{{ ansible_distribution }} {{ ansible_distribution_version }}"

Run: ansible-playbook playbook.yml

Then add tasks one by one, testing after each addition.

Red Flags - Stop and Debug:

• Adding multiple untested tasks at once
• Skipping --check before real runs
• Ignoring "changed" status on second run
• Not testing SSH before writing playbooks