Ansible with VMware – templates – j2 for Jinja2 – Part 20

I will be creating a template from the sshd_config file, basically a copy of it that will be used to deploy to other manage nodes.
Just remember different operating systems may have different options in the sshd config file. The template format is j2 for Jinja2 is a commonly used templating engine.

First create the template folder in the base directory

cd /etc/ansible/roles/base/
sudo mkdir templates

Next lets copy the sshd_config and name it as .j2 extension and centos in the name

sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ansible/roles/base/templates/sshd_config_centos.j2

modify the j2 file

sudo nano /etc/ansible/roles/base/templates/sshd_config_centos.j2
# add the below
AllowUsers {{ ssh_users}}

fix permissions

cd /etc/ansible/roles/base/templates
sudo chmod -R 777 sshd_config_centos.j2

now I will create a IP.yml files for each of my centos boxes in the host_vars folder, I will not set this up for my ubuntu boxes so it may fail on them.

sudo nano 192.168.1.150.yml
sudo nano 192.168.1.151.yml
# add this
 ssh_users: "john"
 ssh_template_file: sshd_config_centos.j2

now lets modify base main.yml

sudo nano /etc/ansible/roles/base/tasks/main.yml

# add the following

- name: openssh generate sshd_config file from template
  tags: ssh
  template:
     src: "{{ ssh_template_file }}"
     dest: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
     owner: root
     group: root
     mode: 0644
  notify: restart_sshd

now create the handlers directory so when there is a change in the sshd_config file the sshd service gets restarted

cd /etc/ansible/roles/base
mkdir handlers
cd handlers
sudo nano main.yml

 - name: restart_sshd
   service:
     name: sshd
     state: restarted

# run it
ansible-playbook /etc/ansible/playbooks/everything.yml --ask-become-pass

see if the AllowUsers john is added to the dest managed hosts in the sshd file /etc/ssh/sshd_config

screen shots below

it failed on the ubuntu boxes because I didn’t create the ip.yml for them and I didn’t create sshd_config for ubuntu and they were turned off, but I did later anyways – screen shots