Exercise 1.0 - Running Ad-hoc commands | Red Hat

Section 1: Ad hoc commands

For our first exercise, we are going to run some ad hoc commands to help you get a feel for how Red Hat Ansible Tower works. Ansible ad hoc commands enable you to perform repeatable tasks on remote nodes, without having to write a playbook. They are very useful when you simply need to do one or two tasks quickly and often, to many remote nodes.

Set Up Dependencies:

Define your inventory. Inventories are crucial to Ansible, as they define remote machines on which you will run commands or your playbook(s). Use vi or vim to create a file called hosts. Then, add the appropriate definitions for the node that will function as a web node.

The workshopname, in the example below, will be provided to you by your instructor. The # should be replaced by your student number.

For example, a recent workshop’s first student used: example-tower0.example.redhatgov.io

hosts (example)

[web]
example-node0.example.redhatgov.io

Step 1: Test webhost response

Let’s start with something basic - pinging a host. The ping module tests the responsiveness of our web host.

ansible web -m ping

Step 2: Run a Linux command

Now let’s see how we can run a Linux command and format the output, using the command module.

ansible web -m command -a "uptime" -o

Step 3: Review the setup module

Take a look at your web node’s configuration. The setup module displays Ansible facts (and a lot of them) about an endpoint.

ansible web -m setup

Step 4: Install Maven and Git

Now, let’s install Maven & Git using the package module.

ansible web -m package -a "name=rh-maven35 state=present" -b
ansible web -m package -a "name=git state=present" -b

Step 5:Install a group of packages

It is even possible to install groups of packages (aka yum groupinstall); such as Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP).

ansible web -m package -a "name=@jboss-eap7 state=present" -b

Step 6: Start JBoss EAP

JBoss EAP is installed now, so let’s start it up using the service module.

ansible web -m service -a "name=eap7-standalone state=started" -b

Step 7: Deploy an application

Next, let’s deploy an application.

For simplicity sake, we will use an existing quickstart. To get started, we will checkout some code …

ansible web -m git -a "repo=https://github.com/jboss-developer/jboss-eap-quickstarts.git dest=/tmp/checkout"

and deploy the code via Maven provided by Red Hat Software Collections.

ansible web -m shell -a "scl enable rh-maven35 'mvn clean install wildfly:deploy -Dmaven.test.skip=true' chdir=/tmp/checkout/helloworld" -b

Demo site (unit test):

ansible web -m uri -a "url=http://localhost:8080/helloworld/ return_content=yes"

Demo site (open this in your web browser):

http://example-node0.example.redhatgov.io:8080/helloworld/

Step 8: Cleanup

Finally, let’s clean up after ourselves. First, stop the Red Hat JBoss EAP service, using the following command.

ansible web -m service -a "name=eap7-standalone state=stopped" -b

Step 9: Remove packages

Next, remove some packages - as follows.

ansible web -m package -a "name=@jboss-eap7 state=absent" -b
ansible web -m package -a "name=eap7-* state=absent" -b
ansible web -m package -a "name=rh-maven35 state=absent" -b
ansible web -m package -a "name=git state=absent" -b

Like many Linux commands, ansible allows for long-form options as well as short-form. For example:

ansible web --module-name ping

is the same as running

ansible web -m ping

We are going to be using the short-form options throughout this workshop

Workshop Details

Student ID:

Workshop:

Region:

Domain:
Workshop Name:
Region:
User ID: