x86 Desktop Linux Playbook

This Ansible Playbook sets up a new x86 desktop Linux machine for development. Nuking-and-paving laptops and setting up VMs was getting tedious, so I wanted to automate the process.

The Playbook installs Node.js, Yarn, Docker, Docker Compose, VS Code + extensions, TLDR, Ansible, VIM, and Terminator. It also creates a ~/projects/ and ~/contributions/ directory for storing code.

Installing the Playbook dependencies

Run the following to install the playbook's dependencies:

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Prepping the target machine

Unfortunately, configuring a new machine with this Playbook isn't quite a 100% automated process: you still need to do some prep on the target machine.

First, check if the SSH service is installed and enabled by default on the machine by running sudo systemctl status ssh. If there is no SSH service, installed open SSH server by running the following:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openssh-server

If the OS is running on hardware instead of inside a VM, you will also need the network IP address of the target device to connect to it. You can get the device's network IP address by running ifconfig. Conversely, you could set a hostname in the /etc/hostname file which would remove the need for a network IP address.

Running

This playbook doesn't use an inventory file, so it takes quite a few command line flags. On the --inventory flag, notice the comma at the end of tylerlaptop.local,. That comma is required: without it, Ansible will assume that tylerlaptop.local is a filename.

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --inventory tylerlaptop.local, --user [your-username] --ask-pass --ask-become-pass

If you're running this Playbook on a Linux installation in a local VM, you'll need to pass the forwarding port. You can do that by tacking --extra-vars "ansible_port=2222" to the end of the command:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --inventory 127.0.0.1, --user [your-username] --ask-pass --ask-become-pass --extra-vars "ansible_port=2222"

After running the Playbook, you will need to reboot the target machine.

Docker installation issues

When running the playbook on Pop!_OS, the Docker installation task fails because it looks for a pop!_os GPG key from Docker. You need to override the Ansible distribution variable by passing in ansible_distribution=Ubuntu to the --extra-vars argument.

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --inventory 127.0.0.1, --user [your-username] --ask-pass --ask-become-pass --extra-vars "ansible_port=2222 ansible_distribution=Ubuntu"

Other notes

Paramiko is set as the SSH client because Ansible's default client doesn't seem to support password authentication.