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Princeton Ansible Playbooks

Princeton Ansible Workflow

Setting up your Python Environment

First-time basic setup on MacOS

  1. Install homebrew
  2. Run bin/first-time-setup.sh

You can then follow the instructions in the following sections to run your playbooks:

  1. Setup your environment
  2. Automatically pull vault password from lastpass
  3. Usage

Install Prerequisites

MacOS

  1. Install Docker Desktop
  2. Install ruby and python

    1. If using [asdf], install the plugins as listed in .tool-versions

      asdf install
pip install pipenv

      NOTE You may encounter an error include the header <string.h> or explicitly provide a declaration for 'memcmp'. Many thanks to folks here for solving this (openssl/openssl#18720 (comment)). Instead run:

      optflags=-Wno-error=implicit-function-declaration ASDF_RUBY_BUILD_VERSION=v20220630 asdf install

      NOTE You may need to run asdf plugin-add python

    2. Otherwise:

      1. brew install python
      2. brew install rbenv
      3. brew install pipenv
  3. If you have errors when running pipenv sync in the Setup your Environment step below, you may need to update pip within the shell; see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65658570/pipenv-install-fails-on-cryptography-package-disabling-pep-517-processing-is-i/67095614#67095614

Microsoft Windows/ Ubuntu

  1. Use the WSL Document

Setup your environment

Note: These commands should be run for each shell you run

bin/setup
pipenv sync
pipenv shell

NOTE: The bin/setup is very important since it adds a pre-commit hook to your environment that will prevent you from accidentally checking in unencrypted vault files.

Determine if everything is installed correctly

Make sure docker is running before you run the following (from inside the pipenv shell) to test the installation:

cd roles/common
pip3 install 'molecule-plugins[docker]'
molecule test

Developing

Create a new role

In all the steps below substitute your role name for your_new_role

  1. Initialize the role with ansible-galaxy Run the following command from the root of this repo:

    export your_new_role=<fill in the role name here>
cd roles
ansible-galaxy role init $your_new_role
cd ..

  2. Set up to run from github actions vi .github/workflows/molecule_tests.yml add for your role at the end matrix of the roles

        - your_new_role

  3. Setup the directory to run molecule

    1. copy all molecule and lint files (note you need the . in the command below to get the hidden files)

      cp roles/example/. $your_new_role

    2. edit vi roles/$your_new_role/meta/main.yml and add a description

    3. edit vi roles/$your_new_role/molecule/default/converge.yml

      1. replace name: Converge with name: your_new_role

  4. Test that your role is now working All tests should pass

    cd roles/$your_new_role
molecule test

  5. Push your branch and verify that CI runs and passes on GitHub Actions.

  6. If the role is related to a new project, add group variables and inventory.

    1. Add a group_vars/your_new_project directory and add files with the required variables. Usually this includes common.yml for variables that apply in all environments, vault.yml for secret values like passwords and keys, and one file per environment (generally at least production.yml and staging.yml).
    2. Add an inventory/all_projects/your_new_project file and list all VMs and other resources. Group them by environment - see any of the existing files for examples.
    3. Add your new groups to the relevant files in the inventory/by_environment/ directory. For example, add your_new_project_production to inventory/by_environment/production. Try to keep the lists alphabetized.

Running Molecule tests

You can run molecule test from either the root directory or the role directory (for example roles/example) If you are writing tests we have found it is easier to test just your examples by running from the role directory.

We also recommend instead of running just molecule test which takes a very long time your run molecule converge to build a docker container with your ansible playbook loaded. You can run converge and/or verify as many times as needed to get your playbook working.

molecule lint
molecule converge
molecule verify

If you are having issues with your tests passing and have run molecule converge you can connect to the running container by running

molecule login

Troubleshooting a container step

If you have a specific task that is not behaving, utilize the tests to run just that step. This is especially useful for long running molecule converge

You basically copy the failing task into the molecule/verify.yml and run verify over and over instead of needing to run the entire converge over and over. This makes debugging much faster and joyful!

Troubleshooting a test run

If you need to ensure you're getting the newest docker image for your local test run you can do a dance like this to delete your ansible docker machines, volumes, and images:

cd to the role in question
% molecule destroy
% docker ps -qaf ancestor=quay.io/pulibrary/jammy-ansible:latest | xargs docker stop
% docker ps -qaf ancestor=quay.io/pulibrary/jammy-ansible:latest | xargs docker rm
% docker volume ls -qf dangling=true | xargs docker volume rm
% docker rmi quay.io/pulibrary/jammy-ansible
% molecule converge

Usage

If you need to run a playbook

ansible-playbook playbooks/example.yml

Running a playbook from an error or a specific task

ansible-playbook playbooks/example.yml --start-at-task="Task Name"

Provisioning to a service with multiple hosts (no downtime)

Check to make sure you're going to run on the correct host $ ansible-playbook playbooks/figgy_production.yml --limit figgy3.princeton.edu --list-hosts

coordinate with operations to take the machine off load balancer run playbook: $ ansible-playbook playbooks/figgy_production.yml --limit figgy3.princeton.edu

capistrano deploy to the box that's off the load balancer. Make sure you're depoying the already-deployed commit! Note the way to do this may vary by project in figgy it's the BRANCH env var $ bundle exec HOSTS=figgy3 BRANCH=commit_hash cap production deploy

SSH to the box that's off the load balancer and check that the index page still looks okay $ curl localhost:80 A bunch of the page only shows up if you're logged in, but you can see the menus and stuff

Tell ops that one's done; switch the load balancer to the other box. Repeat the process.

After both boxes are provisioned, ops puts them back up on the load balancer

provision the workers: $ ansible-playbook playbooks/figgy_production.yml --limit figgy_production_workers

Some roles don't have the right become / sudo settings. (Figgy doesn't have this problem). the -b flag to ansible-playbook will correct these.

how to do a dry run? it's unclear. documentation suggests it's --check

Finally, deploy from robots channel to get the new functionality on all the boxes at once

Connections to other boxes

Currently there's no automation on firewall changes when the box you're provisioning needs to talk to the postgres or solr machines. See instructions for manual edits at:

Vault

Use ansible-vault edit to make changes to the vault.yml file, for example:

ansible-vault edit group_vars/bibdata/vault.yml

If you need to diff an ansible-vault file, run

git config --global diff.ansible-vault.textconv "ansible-vault view"
git config --local merge.ansible-vault.driver "./ansible-vault-merge %O %A %B %L %P"
git config --local merge.ansible-vault.name "Ansible Vault merge driver"

after which any git diff command should decrypt your ansible-vault files.

If a file is not decrypting with git diff you may need to add the file you're trying to diff to .gitattributes.

Automatically pull vault password from lastpass

More information about lastpass-cli can be found here: https://lastpass.github.io/lastpass-cli/lpass.1.html

  1. brew install lastpass-cli
  2. lpass login <[email protected]>
  3. gem install lastpass-ansible or asdf exec gem install lastpass-ansible
  4. source princeton_ansible_env.sh

Troubleshooting lastpass

  • If you get the message [WARNING]: Error in vault password file loading (default): Invalid vault password was provided from script, it's possible you have vault passwords hanging around from previous projects, and they are overriding the lastpass password. If you no longer need those passwords, remove them. For example:
rm -rf ~/.vault_pass.txt
rm -rf ~/.ansible-vaults
  • If you get the message ERROR! Decryption failed (no vault secrets were found that could decrypt), you may still need to source the environment for your shell.
source princeton_ansible_env.sh

Rekeying the vault

  1. Open the old_vault_password server in lastpass. Replace the old vault password with the current ansible vault password. Add a note to include today's date.
  2. Run pwgen -s 48 to create a new password.
  3. Run ansible-vault rekey --ask-vault-password $(grep -Frl "\$ANSIBLE_VAULT;")
  4. Enter the old vault password
  5. Enter the new vault password
  6. Run ansible-vault edit --ask-vault-password on one of the files you changed (providing the new password), to validate that everything is as it should be.
  7. Add the new vault password to the vault_password in lastpass.

Upgrading Ansible version

  1. In a pipenv shell

    pipenv sync
pipenv shell

  2. Upgrade ansible

    pipenv update ansible

    If this fails you may need to

    pipenv uninstall ansible
pipenv install ansible

  3. Create the CI ansible environment

    pipenv lock -r > requirements.txt

  4. Create a PR and commit

Patching Dependabots

  1. Make recommended changes from dependabot PR run pipenv install -r requirements.txt

  2. Check in changes to Pipfile.lock

  3. Run the entire test suite locally

  4. Re-run pipenv lock -r > requirements.txt