Ansible ======= Ansible is a extra-simple Python API for doing 'remote things' over SSH. As Func, which I co-wrote, aspired to avoid using SSH and have it's own daemon infrastructure, Ansible aspires to be quite different and more minimal, but still able to grow more modularly over time. Principles ========== * Dead simple setup * No server or client daemons, uses existing SSHd * Only SSH keys are allowed for authentication * usage of ssh-agent is more or less required * plugins can be written in ANY language * as with Func, API usage is an equal citizen to CLI usage Requirements ============ * python 2.6 -- or a backport of the multiprocessing module * paramiko Inventory file ============== The default inventory file (-H) is ~/.ansible_hosts and is a list of all hostnames to target with ansible, one per line. This list is further filtered by the pattern wildcard (-P) to target specific hosts. Comamnd line usage example ========================== Run a module by name with arguments ssh-agent bash ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ansible -p "*.example.com" -m modName -a "arg1 arg2" API Example =========== The API is simple and returns basic datastructures. import ansible runner = ansible.Runner(command='inventory', host_list=['xyz.example.com', '...']) data = runner.run() { 'xyz.example.com' : [ 'any kind of datastructure is returnable' ], 'foo.example.com' : None, # failed to connect, ... } Additional options to runner include the number of forks, hostname exclusion pattern, library path, and so on. Parallelism =========== Specify the number of forks to use, to run things in greater parallelism. ansible -f 10 "*.example.com" -m modName -a "arg1 arg2" Bundled Modules =============== See the example library for modules, they can be written in any language and simply return JSON to stdout. The path to your ansible library is specified with the "-L" flag should you wish to use a different location than "~/ansible". Features not supported from Func (by design) ============================================ * Delegation for treeish topologies * Asynchronous modes for long running tasks -- background tasks on your own Future plans ============ * Dead-simple declarative configuration management & facts engine, with probes implementable in any language. Author ====== * Michael DeHaan | http://michaeldehaan.net/