Ansible is a popular open-source automation tool that is used to automate the configuration and deployment of applications. In this article, we will guide you through the process of installing and configuring Ansible on Ubuntu 20.04.

Before we begin, make sure that you have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04 and that the necessary dependencies are installed on your system. You will also need to be logged in as a user with sudo privileges.

Install the Ansible package

The first step is to install the Ansible package from the default Ubuntu repositories. To do this, run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible

This will install the Ansible package on your system.

Create an Ansible user

After installing Ansible, we need to create a new user that will be used to run Ansible commands. To do this, run the following commands in the terminal:

sudo adduser ansible
sudo usermod -aG sudo ansible

This will create a new user called “ansible” and add it to the sudo group.

Configure SSH access

Next, we need to configure SSH access for the Ansible user. To do this, log in to the "ansible" user using the following command:

su - ansible

In the ansible user’s home directory, create a new directory called ".ssh" using the following command:

mkdir .ssh

Next, generate a new SSH key pair for the ansible user using the following command:

ssh-keygen

Follow the on-screen instructions to generate the SSH key pair. By default, the SSH keys will be saved in the ".ssh" directory that you created in the previous step.

After generating the SSH key pair, we need to copy the public key to the authorized_keys file using the following command:

cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys

This will add the public SSH key to the authorized_keys file, which allows the Ansible user to log in to the system using the private key.

Configure Ansible

After configuring SSH access for the Ansible user, we need to configure Ansible itself. To do this, open the Ansible configuration file using the following command:

nano /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

In the configuration file, uncomment the following lines to enable SSH key-based authentication:

private_key_file = /home/ansible/.ssh/id_rsa
host_key_checking = False

Save the file and exit the editor.

By following these steps, you should have successfully installed and configured Ansible on your Ubuntu 20.04 system. You can now use Ansible to automate the configuration and deployment of applications.