vps-setup

Project for automatic server setup using ansible.

Tested on Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 LTS and ansible 2.8.0.

Launch

1. Ansible setup

1. Create config file ~/.ansible.cfg:

   [defaults]
   inventory = ~/.ansible.hosts
   vault_password_file = ~/.ansible.vault.pass
   
   [ssh_connection]
   ssh_args = -o ForwardAgent=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s
   pipelining = True
   

   Few notes:

   • Pipelining can make significant performance improvement when enabled, but have incompatibility with requiretty in /etc/sudoers.
   • We will use ssh-agent and agent forwarding to exploit ssh keys from local machine on remotes. So don't forget to run ssh-add before running scripts.

2. Create hosts file ~/.ansible.hosts.
   For example:

   [web]
   user@1.1.1.1
   

3. Create file ~/.ansible.vault.pass with password for ansible vault.
   For example:

   somesecretpassformyvault
   

2. Project setup

1. Download project:

   git clone https://github.com/artslob/vps-setup
   cd vps-setup
   

2. Create file secrets.yml in project root directory with this template:

   vault_user_password: somepass
   vault_user_salt: somesalt
   vault_cf_key: deadbeaf01010101010101010101010101fff
   vault_cf_email: user@example.com
   

   This file contains secrets for user creation, cloudflare tokens for ssl setup (acme).

3. Encrypt it:

   ansible-vault encrypt secrets.yml
   

   Contents of secrets file should be something like this (run cat secrets.yml):

   $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
   31643131623866643738666533313633366533633133353534633461626355366230623339616437
   ...
   

3. Run playbooks

1. Run playbook to create user on your server:

   ansible-playbook 01-create-user.yml -e "host_env=ec2 root_user=ubuntu"
   

   Flag -e (or --extra-vars) provides additional environment variables, which override default values in playbook.
   Contents of encrypted secrets.yml parsed by ansible automatically.

   Few notes:

   • This playbook will not create ssh keys on remote machine. Reason for this is because you should use SSH agent forwarding to exploit your keys from local machine on remotes.
   • Playbook setup switching to sudo mode without password for default user.
   • Also setup for all sudoers preserving of SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable to exploit SSH agent forwarding in sudo mode.

Useful links

1. Ansible vault tutorial
2. Create user with password
3. Create user accounts and setup ssh keys