Automation

This quick guide shows how to use an Ansible playbook to patch a bunch of servers. This approach still is not fully automated, as it needs user input for the execution and provision of secrets from ansible-vault. Prerequisites Ansible installed: Make sure Ansible is installed on the machine that will run the playbook. If you are on MacOS like me, just use brew install ansible. Vault setup: Install and configure Ansible Vault for handling sensitive data....

While writing the blog post about homelab server patching with Ansible, I figured there is a need for setup instructions of ansible-vault. So, here’s a quick guide on setting up and using Ansible Vault to secure sensitive data, like become passwords, for use in playbooks. Obviously, Ansible needs to be installed for this. Step 1: Create a vault password file To streamline running the playbook without being prompted for a vault password every time:...