ansible_mock

Develop and test Ansible roles on the fly with LXD containers.

usage

It is assummed you grok lxd.

ansible_mock can be installed with pip3 install --user . --break-system-packages, or see make install.

From within a role directory, this tool will:

• create an lxd container of --image
• generate and land a root ssh key
• generate a playbook main.yml that enters your role at tasks/main.yml
• execute the playbook

A role is expected to be laid out as follows. vars.yml contains default vars if any:

.
├── handlers
├── tasks
├── templates
└── vars.yml

To run the role:

$ ansible_mock
create_node(): creating node test-46b9b
wait_until_ready(): waiting for lxd agent to become ready on test-46b9b
create_node(): Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following additional packages will be installed:
...
create_node(): 
 ____________
< PLAY [all] >
 ------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
 ________________________
< TASK [Gathering Facts] >
 ------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
ok: [10.139.0.5]
 _____________________________________
< TASK [ansible.builtin.include_vars] >
 -------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
ok: [10.139.0.5]
 _____________________________
< TASK [Enforce ssh key auth] >
 -----------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
changed: [10.139.0.5]
 _______________________________
< TASK [Disable sshd passwords] >
 -------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
changed: [10.139.0.5]
...
10.139.0.5                 : ok=11   changed=8    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=1   
cleanup(): test-46b9b deleted

By default, the instance is immediately deleted.

If used with --preserve, ansible_mock leaves behind the inventory, playbook, and key to run subsequent ansible-playbook commands without having to recreate everything:

ansible_mock --preserve
create_node(): creating node test-50767
wait_until_ready(): waiting for lxd agent to become ready on test-50767
...
main(): environment created.  follow-up configuration can be performed with:
ansible-playbook .mock.yml -i .mock/inventory

You can then run:

ansible-playbook .mock.yml -i .mock/inventory

If you end up with leftover instances, they can be cleaned up:

ansible_mock --cleanup
cleanup(): test-590ad deleted
cleanup(): test-877d4 deleted
cleanup(): test-d98cb deleted
cleanup(): test-50767 deleted
cleanup(): test-46738 deleted

ansible_mock is admittedly not very robust; to see an example of a role where I use this regularly, see debian_common.

license

ansible_mock is offered under terms of GPLv3.