How to Install Apache on Ansible

Apache Overview

Apache is an open source web server, one of the most used web servers in the world. Before following this tutorial, you must be familiar with Ansible.

Configuring Ansible for Apache

Once Ansible is installed, we need to specifiy Ansible which hosts to talk to. We could use the default host file located in /etc/ansible/hosts however, that is applied globally across your system and often requires admin permissions. To make things easier we will use a local hosts file.

Ansible always looks for an ansible.cfg file in the local directory that it is being run from, and if found will override the global configuration with local values.

1 . Create a new directory that we will use through the example

mkdir ansible-apache

2 . Move to this newly created directory

cd ~/ansible-apache/

3 . Create a new file ansible.cfg

nano ansible.cfg

4 . Add in the hostfile configuration option with the value of hosts, within the [defaults] group. Copy the following into the ansible.cfg file.

[defaults]
hostfile = hosts

Next, the hosts file needs to be written.

5 . Create a hosts file and open it for editing

nano hosts

6 . Copy the following into the hosts file. Make sure you replace the secondary_server_ip with the secondary server’s hostname or IP address.

[apache]
secondary_server_ip ansible_ssh_user=username

Note: The ansible_ssh_user=username component is optional if you are running Ansible as the same user as the target host.

which returns

secondary_server_ip | SUCCESS => {
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}

You can also use echo, a Unix command that echoes a string to the terminal

ansible apache -m command -a "/bin/echo hello world"

which returns

secondary_server_ip | success | rc=0 >>
hello world

Creating a Playbook

Playbooks are Ansible’s configuration, deployment, and orchestration language. They can describe a policy you want your remote systems to enforce. In short, playbooks are designed to be human-readable and they are used to manage configurations of and deployments to remote machines.

1 . Create a file called apache.yml

nano apache.yml

2 . Copy the following text into the file

- hosts: apache
  tasks:
    - name: run echo command
      command: /bin/echo hello world

3 . Run the playbook we just created

ansible-playbook apache.yml

which returns

PLAY [apache] *******************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************
Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_rsa':
ok: [secondary_server_ip]

TASK [run echo command] *********************************************************
changed: [secondary_server_ip]

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************
secondary_server_ip               : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0

Playbooks do not return the production of the module, so unlike the direct command we used above, we cannot see if hello world was actually printed.

Installing Apache

1 . Update the apache.yml playbook with the apt module instead of the command module.

nano apache.yml

2 . If there’s already content in the apache.yml file, delete the content and replace it with the following

---
- hosts: apache
  sudo: yes
  tasks:
    - name: install apache2
      apt: name=apache2 update_cache=yes state=latest

3 . Run the Playbook. The ù–ask-sudo-pass flag prompts for the sudo password on the secondary Ansible server.

ansible-playbook apache.yml --ask-sudo-pass

which returns

PLAY [apache] ******************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
ok: [secondary_server_ip]

TASK [install apache2] *********************************************************

changed: [secondary_server_ip]

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
secondary_server_ip               : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0

If you visit your secondary server’s hostname or IP address in your browser, you should now get a Apache2 Ubuntu Default Page to greet you, as follows apache_defaultpage

Configuring Apache Modules

Now that Apache is installed, we need to enable modules to be used by Apache.

Let us make sure that the mod_rewrite module is enabled for Apache using the apache2_module module and a task handler to restart apache2.

The apache2_module module takes two actions:

  • name: The name of the module to enable, such as write.
  • attribute: Either present or away, being on if the module needs to be enabled or not.

1 . Open apache.yml for editing

nano apache.yml

2 . Paste the following content. As we need to restart apache2 after the module is enabled we need to use a task handler.

---
- hosts: apache
  sudo: yes
  tasks:
    - name: install apache2
      apt: name=apache2 update_cache=yes state=latest

    - name: enabled mod_rewrite
      apache2_module: name=rewrite state=present
      notify:
        - restart apache2

  handlers:
    - name: restart apache2
      service: name=apache2 state=restarted

The way handlers work is that a task can be told to notify a handler when it has changed, and the handler only runs when the task has been changed. To do this we need to add the notify option into the apache2_module task, and then we can use the service module to restart apache2 in a handler.

3 . Run the Playbook

ansible-playbook apache.yml --ask-sudo-pass

which returns

PLAY [apache] ******************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_rsa':
ok: [secondary_server_ip]

TASK [install apache2] *********************************************************
ok: [secondary_server_ip]

TASK [enabled mod_rewrite] *****************************************************
changed: [secondary_server_ip]

RUNNING HANDLER [restart apache2] **********************************************
changed: [secondary_server_ip]

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
secondary_server_ip               : ok=4    changed=2    unreachable=0    failed=0

If you run the command again, the restart task is not listed anymore.

Configuring Apache Options

Now that we have a working Apache installation, with our demanded modules turned on, we need to configure Apache. By default Apache listens on port 80 for all HTTP traffic.

For the sake of the tutorial, let us assume that we want Apache to listen on port 8081 instead. We will use the lineinfile module to tune the configuration options.

If you want to know more about the lineinfile module refer to the Ansible Documentation

1 . Open the apache.yml file for editing

nano apache.yml

2 . Amend the additional lines so that the file looks like this:

---
- hosts: apache
  sudo: yes
  tasks:
    - name: install apache2
      apt: name=apache2 update_cache=yes state=latest

    - name: enabled mod_rewrite
      apache2_module: name=rewrite state=present
      notify:
        - restart apache2

    - name: apache2 listen on port 8081
      lineinfile: dest=/etc/apache2/ports.conf regexp="^Listen 80" line="Listen 8081" state=present
      notify:
        - restart apache2

    - name: apache2 virtualhost on port 8081
      lineinfile: dest=/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf regexp="^<VirtualHost \*:80>" line="<VirtualHost *:8081>" state=present
      notify:
        - restart apache2

  handlers:
    - name: restart apache2
      service: name=apache2 state=restarted

3 . Run the Playbook

ansible-playbook apache.yml --ask-sudo-pass

Once Ansible is done, you can visit your web browser on port 8081 (rather than port 80). In most web browsers, this can be easily achieved by adding :port onto the end of the URL: http://public_ip_adress:8081/ apache_defaultpage

Going Further?

USE CASE 2: Configuring Ansible Galaxy

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