AIX and Solaris support

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,

Although the subject looks terrifying for most (or at least me ;-)), I am looking into the project's stance on AIX and Solaris support. One of the projects I am working on is the selection of a management tool that supports Linux, Solaris and AIX.

Given that I don't know of any tools that "could" do this as easy as Ansible could, where would the project take this ? And would any such patches be accepted that would facilitate AIX and Solaris support, or even add AIX and Solaris modules in a separate tree ?

I noticed that the frontpage explicitely mentions Linux/Unix. Was this already discussed before ?

Thanks in advance,

2

Hi,

Although the subject looks terrifying for most (or at least me ;-)), I am
looking into the project’s stance on AIX and Solaris support. One of the
projects I am working on is the selection of a management tool that
supports Linux, Solaris and AIX.

Given that I don’t know of any tools that “could” do this as easy as
Ansible could, where would the project take this ? And would any such
patches be accepted that would facilitate AIX and Solaris support, or even
add AIX and Solaris modules in a separate tree ?

I don’t know what you mean with “where would the project take this”, but we would definitely take patches
for those operating systems.

I’d prefer that work be done to enhance the core modules vs on a separate tree. Shouldn’t be too bad, I wouldn’t think.

I noticed that the frontpage explicitely mentions Linux/Unix. Was this
already discussed before ?

There’s two levels of support. Does ansible talk to X and can you run modules on it, and are the modules
you are particularly using aware of the OS details.

So far I haven’t heard of anyone doing much with AIX/Solaris, but then again, people could be using the file
module perfectly fine and we’d never know. Obviously the service modules may need some tweaks, but the basics
should just work, and if you write an arbitrary module, it should just work. It’s Unix.

We have folks working on upgrading modules for BSD and people have done some work to make Ansible happier
on OS X from an overlord perspective. I am interested in seeing Ansible start to manage OS X
clients as well. Though the core, if you’re just using command or copy or whatever, is good to go.

So yeah, all this is welcome.

3

Although the subject looks terrifying for most (or at least me ;-)), I am
looking into the project's stance on AIX and Solaris support. One of the
projects I am working on is the selection of a management tool that
supports Linux, Solaris and AIX.

Given that I don't know of any tools that "could" do this as easy as
Ansible could, where would the project take this ? And would any such
patches be accepted that would facilitate AIX and Solaris support, or even
add AIX and Solaris modules in a separate tree ?

I don't know what you mean with "where would the project take this", but we would definitely take patches
for those operating systems.

I'd prefer that work be done to enhance the core modules vs on a separate tree. Shouldn't be too bad, I wouldn't think.

Ok, I was assuming incorrectly that there was little interest to go beyond Linux in the core modules (or at least for now).

But this means that the library/setup would need almost a complete reimplementation for AIX and Solaris, and I was expecting opposition to that since it is now almost exclusively Linux AFAICT.

I noticed that the frontpage explicitely mentions Linux/Unix. Was this
already discussed before ?

There's two levels of support. Does ansible talk to X and can you run modules on it, and are the modules
you are particularly using aware of the OS details.

So far I haven't heard of anyone doing much with AIX/Solaris, but then again, people could be using the file
module perfectly fine and we'd never know. Obviously the service modules may need some tweaks, but the basics
should just work, and if you write an arbitrary module, it should just work. It's Unix.

I noticed Puppet has AIX and Solaris integration for e.g. package management and facts, so I guess we could learn a thing or two from them as well.

We have folks working on upgrading modules for BSD and people have done some work to make Ansible happier
on OS X from an overlord perspective. I am interested in seeing Ansible start to manage OS X
clients as well. Though the core, if you're just using command or copy or whatever, is good to go.

I didn't know, but I have not been very active on the list.

So yeah, all this is welcome.

Perfect ! It's good to know we can propose Ansible to the people that make decisions :slight_smile:

Thanks,

4

Although the subject looks terrifying for most (or at least me ;-)), I am
looking into the project’s stance on AIX and Solaris support. One of the
projects I am working on is the selection of a management tool that
supports Linux, Solaris and AIX.

Given that I don’t know of any tools that “could” do this as easy as
Ansible could, where would the project take this ? And would any such
patches be accepted that would facilitate AIX and Solaris support, or even
add AIX and Solaris modules in a separate tree ?

I don’t know what you mean with “where would the project take this”, but we would definitely take patches
for those operating systems.

I’d prefer that work be done to enhance the core modules vs on a separate tree. Shouldn’t be too bad, I wouldn’t think.

Ok, I was assuming incorrectly that there was little interest to go beyond
Linux in the core modules (or at least for now).

Definitely not the case. One of my reasons for doing this was I wanted a system that I could easily attack BSD and OS X machines if needed.

Now the modules haven’t really evolved to that level yet, but the core infrastructure basically has.

But this means that the library/setup would need almost a complete
reimplementation for AIX and Solaris, and I was expecting opposition to
that since it is now almost exclusively Linux AFAICT.

Not reimplementation, augmentation.

Linux was just the first one, and ansible built in facts are a very recent development – for a while we only called facter or ohai if present.

I would be plenty happy with the fact stuff just returning no facts on other platforms for starters – until someone wanted to add them.