ansible (remote) provisioner to "synchronize" files with packer-provided host

[Nirav Radia]

My use-case is to run a playbook which installs Oracle JDK, GIT etc and "synchronize" a folder (say /home/ubuntu/abc) lying on my ansible-controller with ansible-host (at /tmp/abc).

Reading the documentation of ansible-remote, I thought using ansible provisioner would be good. But when I did that, to my surprise, the playbook was synchronizing the folder from /home/ubuntu/abc with /tmp/abc on the SAME MACHINE where I am running packer.

Is it possible that I can use machine running PACKER as ansible controller and use machine provisioned by packer as host?

Here is my packer.json:

{



"builders": [

{

"type": "amazon-ebs",

"access_key": "<<my_key_id>>",

"secret_key": "<<my_secret_key>>",

"ami_name": "CentOS 7 AMI by packer - {{timestamp}}",

"ami_description": "AMI created using packer",

"region": "us-west-2",

"source_ami": "ami-d2c924b2",

"instance_type": "t2.micro",

"ssh_username": "centos",

"user_data_file": "disable_tty.sh",

"ami_name": "packer-example-{{timestamp}}",

"tags": {

"Name": "web-nginx"

}

}

],

"provisioners": [

{

"type": "ansible",

"playbook_file": "ansible/install-binaries.yml",

"user": "centos",

"extra_arguments": ["-vvvv"],

"sftp_command": "/usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server"

}

]

}

install-binaries.yml

---



- name: Install JAVA 1.8 if needed

  hosts: all

  become: true

  roles:

   - williamyeh.oracle-java




- name: Install git

  hosts: all

  become: true

  roles:

   - davidkarban.git

   

- name: Install rsync

  hosts: all

  become: true

  roles:

   - kbrebanov.rsync




- name: Copy my directory

  hosts: all

  become: true

  roles:


    - ABC.myrole

tasks/main.yml of role ABC.myrole

---


- name: Remove installation if exists

  file: path="{{deploy_dir}}" state="absent"




- name: Synchronize installation

  synchronize: src="{{src_dir}}/" dest="{{deploy_dir}}"




- name: Make shell scripts executable

  shell: "find ./ -name '*.sh' -exec chmod +x {} \\;"

  args:

    chdir: "{{deploy_dir}}"

disable_tty.sh

#!/bin/bash
sed -i '/Defaults \+requiretty/s/^/#/' /etc/sudoers

The variable values are:

deploy_dir: "/tmp/myDirectory"

src_dir: ".~/ansible/myDirectory" 

Directory structure:

/home/ubuntu/

-- packer.json

-- disable_tty.sh (Need this for "become: true" in playbook on CentOS 7 image which I am using)

-- ansible

   -- roles (all the roles are inside this)

   -- install-binaries.yml

-- myDirectory

The task "Synchronize installation" takes too long (waited till 15 minutes and then stopped it !!!) and meanwhile, I observed there is myDirectory created in /tmp of the PACKER HOST (of course I can't check on host which PACKER is providing the temp instance it is in creation state)

The size of myDirectory is more than 550 MB and it contains a LOT of little files and binaries.

Machine I am running packer is Ubuntu 14.04

Source AMI is Centos 7 from its official website.

[Matzuba]

Hi there

Did you get this working at all?

I am trying to figure how to get packer to work with ansible roles i have created.  I dont want to use one playbook file.

cheers

[Nirav Radia]

Hi,

I gave up after a few tries on synchronizing the whole folder and created gzip of it and copied it using ansible copy module and extracted on remote machine at desired location.

Regards,

Nirav

[Matzuba]

Hi Nirav and thanks for the reply.

Sorry, i wasn't clear.  i am interested in your role setup with Packer. 

Do roles work exactly the same as if i was just applying to a running server?  Did you have to do anything different or factor any changes in files or directory layout?

My goal is to have a role that can be run on any server, be that a running instance or with packer AMI image. I only want to maintain the compliance role in one repo with all the rest of our ansible code.  I am just not sure if this will work with Packer and that there will be subtle differences.  Eg, host will be all, 

I'm looking to something like:

.
├── ansible.cfg
├── environment
│   └── packerbuild
│       ├── group_vars
│       │─  hosts
│       └── host_vars
│           └──
│   └── dev
│       ├── group_vars
│       │    
│       ├── hosts
│       └── host_vars
│          
├── hostkeys
│   └── hostkey1
├── playbooks
│   ├── build.yml
├── roles
│   │  
│   └── compliance
│       ├── defaults
│       │   └── main.yml
│       ├── files
│       │   └── file1.sh
│       ├── handlers
│       │   └── main.yml
│       ├── meta
│       │   └── main.yml
│       ├── README.md
│       ├── tasks
│       │   ├── task1.yml
|       |   |- main.yml
│       │   │       │  
│       │   └── test.yml
│       ├── templates
│       │   ├── template1.j2.
│       │
│       ├── tests
│       │   ├── inventory
│       │   └── test.yml
│       └── vars
│           └── main.yml

I have a build playbook under ansible/playbooks which calls the compliance role.  This role has multiple include statements in the role/tasks/mainyml

This works fine to apply to a running server from my control node but  it seems that the playbook calling the role cant be in ansible/playbooks but must be relative to the role so i had to move this one level up.

cat packer-role/build.yml

---

- name:  Build Role

  hosts: all

  roles:

    - role: compliance

Would you mind sharing any guidance you have with using roles and ansible-remote provisioner?   

Do you have a separate ansible code base for packer?

Cheers

Mat