Example: Secure Nginx Server

This page walks through a procedure resulting in the following files:

    playbooks/ansible.cfg
    playbooks/hosts
    playbooks/Vagrantfile
    playbooks/web-notls.yml
    playbooks/web-tls.yml
    playbooks/files/nginx.key
    playbooks/files/nginx.crt
    playbooks/files/nginx.conf
    playbooks/templates/index.html.j2
    playbooks/templates/nginx.conf.j2

Port configuration (Vagrantfile)

We want to arrange the Vagrant machine so that we map the local port 8080 to the vagrant machine's port 80, and map the local port 8443 to the vagrant machine's port 443.

The Vagrantfile is a Ruby file that specifies how to start up and set up the Vagrant boxes. The Vagrantfile should be modified as follows:

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/xenial64"
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 443, host: 8443
end

Now instruct vagrant to reload from the Vagrantfile:

$ vagrant reload

==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 80 => 8080 (adapter 1)
    default: 443 => 8443 (adapter 1)
    default: 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)

Simple playbook

Here is a simple playbook for our secure nginx server:

web-notls.yml:

- name: Configure webserver with nginx
  hosts: webservers
  become: True
  tasks:
    - name: install nginx
      apt: name=nginx update_cache=yes

    - name: copy nginx config file
      copy: src=files/nginx.conf dest=/etc/nginx/sites-available/default

    - name: enable configuration
      file: >
        dest=/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
        src=/etc/nginx/sites-available/default
        state=link

    - name: copy index.html
      template: src=templates/index.html.j2 dest=/usr/share/nginx/html/index.html
        mode=0644

    - name: restart nginx
      service: name=nginx state=restarted

Required files: /etc/nginx/sites-available/default, /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html

YAML truth-y values: true, True, TRUE, yes, Yes, YES, on, On, ON, y, Y

YAML false-y values: false, False, FALSE, no, No, NO, off, Off, OFF, n, N

nginx config file

Here is the corresponding nginx configuration file, which we put in files/nginx.conf:

files/nginx.conf:

server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;

        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index index.html index.htm;

        server_name localhost;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

nginx index html page

Likewise, we want to create an index page for nginx to serve up, and we want to put template files into the playbook directory, in the templates subdirectory.

(NOTE: .j2 extension means it is a Jinja 2 template)

playbooks/templates/index.html.j2

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome to ansible</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <h1>nginx, configured by Ansible</h1>
  <p>If you can see this, Ansible successfully installed nginx.</p>

  <p>Running on {{ inventory_hostname }}</p>
  </body>
</html>

Flags

Ansible/Playbooks

From charlesreid1

Contents