Understand Core Components of Ansible - Modules

If we're going to populate index.html with facts from the server, we need to collect them first.

ansible localhost -m setup --tree /tmp/facts

Rather than using yum to install httpd we're going to use Ansible.

ansible localhost -m yum -a "name=httpd state=present" --become

We need to use the --become flag so that Ansible knows to elevate for root priveleges.

If we look in the directory we used in the first task, there's a file named 127.0.0.1 with all the server's facts. Using Ansible we can just copy that into index.html.

ansible localhost -m copy -a "src=/tmp/facts/127.0.0.1 dest=/var/www/html/index.html mode=0600 owner=apache group=apache" --become

We need to use --become because /var/www/html isn't writable unless you're the apache or root user and we're trying to make the file owned by someone who isn't ansible.

We've installed Apache, but it isn't running by default. Luckily we can start and manage services with Ansible.

ansible localhost -m service -a "name=httpd state=started enabled=yes" --become

Again, we need to use --become because only root can start a service.