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Ansible Quick Start Guide

✅ Overview​

Ansible is an agentless automation tool for provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. This guide covers setup, usage, and examples for Windows, Ubuntu, and macOS.

⚙️ Setup​

1) Install Python (required)​

Ansible runs on Python. Install Python 3.11+ on your controller machine (the one you run Ansible from).

python3 -m venv ~/.ansible-venv
source ~/.ansible-venv/bin/activate

3) Install Ansible​

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install ansible

💻 Platform-specific instructions​

Ubuntu (WSL2 or native Linux)​

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y python3 python3-venv python3-pip
python3 -m venv ~/.ansible-venv
source ~/.ansible-venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install ansible

macOS​

brew update
brew install python
python3 -m venv ~/.ansible-venv
source ~/.ansible-venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install ansible

Windows (PowerShell + Windows Subsystem for Linux recommended)​

Use WSL2 with Ubuntu for best compatibility.

  1. Install WSL2 and Ubuntu from Microsoft Store.
  2. Open Ubuntu shell and follow the Ubuntu steps above.

If using native Windows PowerShell (less common):

python -m venv C:\Users\<you>\ansible-venv
C:\Users\<you>\ansible-venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install ansible

🧪 Quick usage​

1) Check Ansible version​

ansible --version

2) Inventory file​

Create inventory.ini:

[local]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local

3) Basic ad-hoc command​

ansible -i inventory.ini local -m ping

🧩 Example Playbook​

Create playbook.yml:

- name: Example Ansible playbook
  hosts: local
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure hello.txt exists
      copy:
        dest: /tmp/hello.txt
        content: "Hello from Ansible!\n"
    - name: Show hello.txt contents
      command: cat /tmp/hello.txt
      register: catout
    - debug:
        msg: "File output: {{ catout.stdout }}"

Run it:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml

📦 Example: Install Nginx (Ubuntu)​

Create nginx-playbook.yml:

- name: Install Nginx on target hosts
  hosts: local
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: Update apt cache
      apt:
        update_cache: true
    - name: Install nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present
    - name: Ensure nginx service is running
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: started
        enabled: true

Run:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini nginx-playbook.yml

📌 Tips​

  • Keep your inventory in inventory.ini or hosts.yml.
  • Use ansible-lint for playbook quality checks (pip install ansible-lint).
  • For Windows targets, set ansible_connection=winrm and configure WinRM.

🔗 Resources​