You only need to install it on one machine (which could easily be a laptop) and it can manage an entire fleet of remote machines from that central point. When Ansible manages remote machines, it does not leave software installed or running on them, so there’s no real question about how to upgrade Ansible when moving to a new version.
Once Ansible is installed, it will not add a database, and there will be no daemons to start or keep running.
Ansible by default manages machines over the SSH protocol.
Install the Command Line Developer Tools for OS X El Capitan.
If Xcode is not currently installed, we can simply grab the Command Line Developer Tools for OS X El Capitan.
$ xcode-select --install
xcode-select: note: install requested for command line developer tools
Install 'pip'.
OS X El Capitan System Integrity Protection makes it difficult to alter system-level components, so we will be installing the Python components with the --user option.
$ easy_install --help | grep -A 3 -- --user
--user install in user site-package
'/Users/marc/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-
packages'
$ easy_install --user pip
Add the Python 2.7 user bin directory to our PATH variable.
For example, if using the default shell (Bash) with no existing configuration:
$ printf 'if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then\n source ~/.bashrc\nfi\n' >> $HOME/.profile
$ printf 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/Library/Python/2.7/bin\n' >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ source $HOME/.profile
Verify the 'pip' command is now in our PATH.
$ pip --version
Install/Upgrade 'ansible' via 'pip'.
$ pip install --help | grep -A 2 -- --user
--user Install to the Python user install directory for your
platform. Typically ~/.local/, or %APPDATA%\Python on
Windows. (See the Python documentation for site.USER_BASE
for full details.)
$ pip install --user --upgrade ansible
Verify the successful installation of the Ansible components.
$ type -a ansible
$ ansible --version
Create the system-wide Ansible directory.
$ sudo mkdir /etc/ansible
Copy the default Ansible configuration file to the system-wide Ansible directory.
$ sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/ansible.cfg -o /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
Verification
By default, we don't have an existing Ansible Inventory, but we can run ansible with localhost as the target.
$ ansible localhost -m ping
localhost | success >> {
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
$ ansible localhost -m setup -a 'filter=ansible_distribution'
localhost | success >> {
"ansible_facts": {
"ansible_distribution": "MacOSX"
},
"changed": false
}
$ ansible localhost -a 'uname -a'
localhost | success | rc=0 >>
Darwin Mac-Pro.local 15.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Raise open file descriptors value for Ansible >= 2.x
As of version 2.0, Ansible uses a few more file handles to manage its forks. OS X has a very low default setting (256), so if we want to use 15 or more forks, we will need to raise the maximum number of open file descriptors value.
$ launchctl limit maxfiles
maxfiles 256 unlimited
$ sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 1024 unlimited
To make the change persistent, we need to create a launchd property list file. Refer to How to persist ulimit settings in OSX Mavericks? for more information.
$ launchctl limit maxfiles
maxfiles 524288 524288
$ ulimit -n
524288
Create the Ansible Inventory and Playbooks.
Maintenance
List outdated packages installed in user-site.
$ pip list --user --outdated
Update outdated packages installed in user-site.
For example, if the setuptools and ansible packages were listed in the output of the previous command:
$ pip install --user --upgrade setuptools
$ pip install --user --upgrade ansible