Basic beginner question

Archives Ansible Project
1

Starting out with ansible and trying to configure sshd config. Here is what I have, it works but is there a better way to do with for future reference. e.g. if I have many different distributions it looks like a lot of copying. Can I combine the 2 tasks?

  • name: sshd Amazon
    lineinfile:
    state: present
    path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    regexp: “^AllowUsers”
    line: AllowUsers ec2-user
    when: ansible_distribution == ‘Amazon’
    notify:

  • restart sshd

  • name: sshd Centos
    lineinfile:
    state: present
    path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    regexp: “^AllowUsers”
    line: AllowUsers centos
    when: ansible_distribution == ‘Centos’
    notify:

  • restart sshd

2

You can create a variable that contains the information

allowusers:
   Amazon: ec2-user
   Centos: centos

And then you only need one task
- name: sshd_config
   lineinfile:
     path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
     regexp: "^AllowUsers"
     line: AllowUsers {{ allowusers[ansible_distribution] }}
   notify: restart sshd

3

Hi,

You probably looking for ansible_os_family which is RedHat for these distributions : RedHat EL, CentOS, Amazon, etc…

You should probably test the major version (between 6 and 7, there’s service and systemctl which are kind different for example, I suppose you’re not modifying only ssh config)

So you’re when directive should be something like this :

when: ansible_os_family == ‘RedHat’ and ansible_distribution_major_version in [‘6’,‘7’]

Regards,

4

Brilliant - thank you