Ansible standup for GUI and ssh only workstations

This is a collection of ansible scripts that set up a chunk of packages that I use in my day to day operations. Use of the gui flag allows

Runbook Steps

• clone this repo to the machine you wish to ansible
• Option 1:
  • run 'install.sh' if you need to install all prerequisites (Python/Ansible/Git) ./install.sh Option 2:
  • If you already ran 'install.sh' or have all the prerequisites installed, run the ansible playbook directly ansible-playbook main.yml -i ./hosts -c local -v --ask-become-pass

Two Modes for Install

GUI Workstation

ansible-playbook main.yml -i ./hosts -c local --tags gui

Terminal workstation

ansible-playbook main.yml -i ./hosts -c local

Optional Use of password sudo

Append --ask-become-pass for password based sudo

General Setup

The command sh ansible-workstations-ubuntu/install.sh is run.

This then calls the main.yml file which consists of three roles, pre-install, workstation, and postbrew, as well as the additional gui components role.

The preinstall creates a shared directory using the variable sharedInstallPath: /opt/ansible-up. This directory is used throughout the ansible installation.

Note that there might be installations of things multiple times. This code can be improved by removing redundancies.

In our post-brew task, we utilize the shared directory to set up a python2 and python3 virtual environment. I tried implementing a similar setup for emacs, however, I am not sure if it is implemented properly or what the best way to implement that is.

Additional notes

This current version is designed specifically for WSL, however it should run on other environments. This is handled using a "when: ansible_facts['virtualization_type'] == " statement to help modify behavior depending on the virtualization technology used. In some environments, it has been observed that the virtualization type instead of "wsl" is instead listed as "NA", so the ansible code has been modified to cover this. If you are uncertain as to how ansible is interpreting your environment, please run the command:

ansible -m setup localhost

This installation of the GUI components is omitted for wsl. In particular snapd is used for GUI installs, and snapd relies on systemd, and systemd is not present in wsl.

Lastly

This is still a work in progress. Feel free to update it and configure it to install your desired tools.