Posts in DevOps
Installing Ansible with Python
- 14 July 2023
In posts Installing Ansible on Ubuntu 22.04 and Installing Ansible on Debian 12 Ansible was installed via the package manager. Another option is to install Ansible with Python in a virtual environment so you can have multiple Ansible versions installed on the same machine.
Since Ansible is written in Python, it can be installed in a Python virtual environment which is a self-contained directory tree that contains a Python installation for a particular version of Python, plus a number of additional packages. The virtual environment can be created with the venv module, which is part of the Python since version 3.4.
Installing Ansible on Debian 12
- 09 July 2023
Ansible is a great tool for automating tasks on multiple servers. It is easy to learn and use and it is very powerful. Ansible is written in Python and it uses SSH to connect to the servers or devices you want to manage like routers, switches, etc. There needs to be a central server where Ansible is installed and from there you can manage all your servers or devices.
In this post, we will create that central server and install Ansible on Debian 12 “bookworm” from the official Debian repositories. The first step is to update the system to the latest packages so that we can install Ansible from the official Debian repositories.
Installing Ansible on Ubuntu 22.04
- 29 May 2023
Ansible is a great tool for automating tasks on multiple servers. It is easy to learn and use and it is very powerful. Ansible is written in Python and it uses SSH to connect to the servers or devices you want to manage like routers, switches, etc. There needs to be a central server where Ansible is installed and from there you can manage all your servers or devices.
In this post, we will create that central server and install Ansible on Ubuntu 22.04 from the official Ubuntu repositories or from the Ansible PPA repositories depending on your needs. The first step is to update the system to the latest packages so that we can install Ansible from the official Ubuntu repositories.
Add issues to projects on GitHub
- 22 March 2023
Adding issues to projects on GitHub is a great way to keep track of what needs to be done. This action will add issues to a project board on GitHub when they are opened or labeled. But adding issues to a project board is a manual process. The action actions/add-to-project automates the process of adding issues to a project board.
In the workflows the environment variable ADD_TO_PROJECT_URL is used to define the project board. The project board is defined by the URL of the project board. The URL can be found in the browser when the project board is opened. The URL is defined in the env section of the workflow file.
Label and close stale issues
- 10 February 2023
Issues and pull-requests are part of projects and repositories, but can also be forgotten when they grow out of control. You could search for stale issues manually once in a while, but it is another task on someone’s calendar that has been done. Like with post Add labels to GitHub pull requests this also can be automated. This way the backlog can be kept small so the team working on doesn’t have too much outstanding and untouched work.
Both GitHub App probot/stale and GitHub Action actions/stale are solutions that can be used to scan for stale issues and pull-requests, and label them or even close them. Both solutions have their benefits and drawbacks, but let’s see how they’re configured.
Add labels to GitHub pull requests
- 08 February 2023
Labels on issues and pull requests can make it easier to understand the content, but also make paying attention to what has changed and selecting them easier. If a pull request only has the label terraform for example it indicates that only infrastructure changes are in play.
While multiple GitHub Actions exist the two main solutions are Probot Autolabeler and GitHub Actions Labeler. The first solution is based on a GitHub App that must be installed and have permission to update pull requests, the second solution is based on a workflow that runs a GitHub Action.
Create GitHub issues on a schedule
- 04 February 2023
In post Custom GitHub templates for issues, the first step was made to automate the workflow more by defining issue templates on the organizational level and assigning labels when creating a new issue. A human still needs to create the issue manually while some issues must be created on a schedule to deploy new certificates or run an Ansible playbook to patch servers for example.
Like in post Start using GitHub Dependabot where merge requests were automatically created for updated dependencies, issues can also be created on a schedule. Let’s create a workflow that creates an issue every month for recurring maintenance that must be done.
Custom GitHub templates for issues
- 03 February 2023
Automating workflows reduces the need to think about them, but can also guide new people in the right direction. One of these workflows is creating issues for example. One could use the default templates provided by GitHub to create an issue for a bug or a new feature. Only default templates may not fulfill all requirements needed for a smooth workflow for a project on GitHub.
By default, GitHub has templates for issues and pull requests, but on both organization and repository levels, an override can take place. Meaning that the most specific template set will be used when creating an issue or pull request. First, we will define templates for the whole organization by creating the .github repository within the organization.
Start using GitHub Dependabot
- 31 October 2020
GitHub bought a service called Dependabot a while back and is now integrating this service as a GitHub Application into the ecosystem. This allows GitHub users to automatically do dependency management and get alerted when a security-related update has been found. For a while this service was in beta but it is now enabled for all public repositories and can be enabled for private repositories as well.
Let’s start simple and create file .github/dependabot.yml in the repository with the content below will tell Dependabot to scan all your GitHub workflows daily for GitHub Actions that are defined and have a newer release available. It will also create a pull request that can be merged when approved.
Environment variables set by systemd
- 02 July 2019
Applications sometimes need environment variables to be set for triggering certain behavior like giving debug output or routing traffic via a HTTP-proxy for example. A common way is to modify the start-stop script, but with systemd on most Linux systems, like Debian and Red Hat based distributions, this can also be directly set within the unit file and you don’t have to export the variables anymore.
Let’s start with a Python script to read and print the environment variables set by the environment to see how this works. The Python script below that we run via systemd checks if environment variable VAR1 has been set and will generate different output based on that.