Learning DevOps: Continuously Deliver Better Software

Creating a common role

Now that we have a way to create our scaffold Playbook we can go ahead and create our first role; this role will create users, add SSH keys, and install software. I tend to find it invaluable on any server I am managing.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you need an Ubuntu 14.04 server to act as an Ansible client, and an Ubuntu 14.04 server that you wish to configure.

How to do it…

Let's create a common role:

1. First, create a new playbook using our scaffold script, which we created in the preceding recipe:

   $ playbookscaffold.sh -p . -t "first_playbook"
   

2. Edit first_playbook/roles/common/tasks/main.yml and insert the following code snippet:

   # tasks file for common
   - include: create_users.yml

   The include statement tells Ansible to parse ...