hypoport/ansible repository overview

⁠Ansible in Docker

A simple yet flexible Ansible environment in Docker.

It expects your Ansible project at path /ansible. You can build your own container and copy it there or simply use a volume mount.

All Ansible commands will be run as non-root user ansible. They will be executed via virtualenv, so you are still able to install additional Python packages from your Playbooks or Ad-Hoc commands.

⁠Adding your private key

Before any command is run, we copy whatever file is configured as DEFAULT_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE into the home directory of the ansible user and adjust its permissions.

We extract DEFAULT_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE from the effective configuration, so you can either configure it - for example - via environment variable ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE or ansible.cfg.

After copying and chowning the file, we adjust the ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE variable to point to the new file.

Eventually we start an ssh-agent and add the key to it. This makes working with password protected private keys much more convenient.

⁠Adding a vault password file

Before any command is run, we copy whatever file is configured as DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE into the home directory of the ansible user and adjust its permissions.

We extract DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE from the effective configuration, so you can either configure it - for example - via environment variable ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE or ansible.cfg.

After copying and chowning the file, we adjust the ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE variable, and therefore the configuration, to point to the new file.

⁠Configuring Ansible via Environment

Any given Ansible environment variable⁠ will be passed on to Ansible, just as it would be in a non-containerized environment. The only exceptions are ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE and ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE for the reasons mentioned above.

⁠Example

The following exmaple shows how to:

• Mount Ansible project a volume at path /ansible
• Adding an existing private key
• Adding a vault password file

docker run -it --rm
  -v "${YOUR_ANSIBLE_PROJECT}:/ansible:ro"
  -v "${HOME}/.ssh/id_rsa:/ansible-support/id_rsa:ro"
  -v "${YOUR_VAULT_KEY_FILE}:/ansible-support/vault_key:ro"
  -e "ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE=/ansible-support/id_rsa"
  -e "ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE=/ansible-support/vault_key"
  hypoport/ansible:12.1.0 ansible-playbook --help