Ansible AWX Part 1

Published: 2017-10-02

Intro

AWX is the upstream open source project to Tower.

This is the first part of a series on Ansible AWX. In this part we will install Ansible AWX.

Code versions used for this post

  • Centos 7 - minimal 1705.02 (vagrant box)
  • Python - 2.7.13
  • Ansible - 2.4.0
  • docker - 1.12.6
  • Ansible AWX - 1.0.0.577

Centos 7 minimal ships with python 2.7.5 which is pretty old, I will be installing python 2.7.13 for use with ansible. I have a guide to install python 2.7.13 and 3.6.2 here and an ansible role here

Note
At the time of writing AWX is not python3 compatible. You will require root/sudo privileges and PIP installed to follow this guide.

Ansible AWX Components

AWX is a web GUI based management system for Ansible. AWX is built with a microservices architecture using docker as the container runtime. Redhat provide an installer playbook as part of AWX which can build onto either an openshift cluster or a stand alone docker install. This post will use the stand alone docker method.

Pre Installation Tasks

Prior to installing AWX we will need to prepare the system.

Install required YUM packages

cmd
yum install -y epel-release
yum install -y git gettext docker nodejs npm gcc-c++ bzip2

Install required PIP packages

Install the ansible and docker python libraries via PIP to get the latest stable releases.

cmd
pip2 install ansible docker

Start and enable docker service

cmd
systemctl start docker
systemctl enable docker

Open firewall ports

cmd
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https

firewall-cmd --reload

Set SELinux to Permissive

I dont know the necessary SELinux policies to make AWX function correctly so I am setting the policy to permissive.

cmd
setenforce permissive

To make the changes permanent set the SELINUX variable under /etc/selinux/config to permissive and reboot.

file
SELINUX=permissive

Install AWX

Now that pre-installation tasks are completed lets install AWX.

Clone AWX Git repo

cmd
mkdir /opt/ansible
cd /opt/ansible

git clone https://github.com/ansible/awx.git

Edit the inventory file

If you followed my guide on upgrading python2/3 then you will need to change the ansible_python_interpreter variable in the /opt/ansible/awx/installer/inventory file from /usr/bin/env python to /usr/local/bin/python2.7

file
#/opt/ansible/awx/installer/inventory

# old
localhost ansible_connection=local ansible_python_interpreter="/usr/bin/env python"

# new
localhost ansible_connection=local ansible_python_interpreter="/usr/local/bin/python2.7"

Run the install playbook

cmd
cd /opt/ansible/awx/installer/

ansible-playbook -i inventory install.yml

Login to AWX

Once the playbook is complete you can login to AWX via the web GUI.

Browse to the AWX url http://<awx-hostname-or-ip> and login with the username admin and the password is password. Note: The password can be set in the inventory file with the default_admin_password variable.

The dashboard looks like this

Note
If you see the below when browsing to the URL, wait a few minutes.

Outro

Ansible AWX is now installed and ready to be configured. In future posts I will configure AWX for use with network devices.