Inventory plugin now available to read from ansible-commander, better setup instructions

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1

See the updated setup instructions here --

https://github.com/ansible/ansible-commander/blob/master/README.md

This is more setup than I'd actually like, but I think it's ok because
you're only going to have to do it once. I also want people to
understand a bit about how it works. (Seem reasonable?)

I made a choice in doing this where the acom_inventory.py plugin for
ansible speaks REST to the ansible-commander server to get inventory
data. This allows configuration of multiple remote ansible machines
to point to a single ansible-commander as an inventory source. This
is why you have to configure a limited shared secret key -- just so
you don't share host variables with machines that don't have any
business reading them. If you are not setting passwords in your
variables, even this doesn't matter so much.

Here it is (rough cut):

https://github.com/ansible/ansible-commander/blob/master/inventory_script/acom_inventory.py

(and trivial config file):

https://github.com/ansible/ansible-commander/blob/master/inventory_script/acom_inventory.cfg

Anyway, things are in place to allow the REST API to be used for
inventory now -- at least in theory. Test if you like and let me
know if there are quirks, but it will be much easier to test manually
once the UI starts to allow us to muck with objects instead of
throwing JSON at URLs.

So yeah --The UI development can now begin, which I plan to work on
some in the coming days. I'm going to start by getting some of the
infrastructure in place and making sure the components I think I want
to use are sane. The interface to edit users will come first,
followed shortly by groups and hosts. I suspect once I get the
basics off the ground, there's going to be tons of room for people to
submit some neat stuff -- and from what I have seen so far, I am
supremely impressed by a lot of your skills and am super excited about
where this might go!

Let me know if there are questions and please let me know if the setup
process doesn't make a lot of sense.

Thanks!

--Michael

2

I was thinking about the setup process a bit.

To simplify setup, it also occurs to me that we could easily make
acom_inventory plugin only speak locally for those that wanted it,
this would probably be done by adding a "mode=" flag to both
acom_inventory.py and commander.py (to shut it off), where it wouldn't
be remote (web servicey) except on machines that it needed to be
remote.

This would be suitable if you only ran Ansible from one machine. The
REST API would be accessible anywhere (authenticated) but when ansible
goes to fetch host data, it could just hit the database, meaning the
inventory variables need not be surfaced.

This also means that users don't have to initially set up as many
settings, which yields quicker gains.

(It also has the bonus points of being blazing fast and not even
needing the flask component running)

3

Man you're fast! Do you have a day job :wink: But in regards to the
installation, it looks completely reasonable to me.

4

Thankfully, yes, I'm just fast!

Good deal, thanks for looking it over.