Setup an Ansible control node

Table of Contents

1. Install the SCAP security guide package
2. Creating Ansible inventory files
3. Add inventory files to the Ansible control node

To setup an Ansible control node, execute the following steps from the SUSE Manager Web UI.

procedure: Setup an Ansible control node

From the Web UI under Admin Setup Wizard Products, verify that the product SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 x86_64 channel and SUSE Manager Client Tools for SLE 15 x86_64 are installed and synchronized.
Deploy a SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 client.
Select the client from the Systems Overview page. Select Software Software Channels and subscribe the client to the channels SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 x86_64 and SUSE Manager Client Tools for SLE 15 x86_64.

The SUSE Manager client tools contains the Ansible package.
From the System Overview page, select your client.
Select Details Properties, and under Add-On System Types: enable Ansible Control Node and click Update Properties.
Navigate to the client overview page, select menu:[State > Highstate], and click Apply Highstate.
Select the Events tab and verify the status of the highstate.

1. Install the SCAP security guide package

For executing remediations you need to install the SCAP security guide package on the Ansible control node.

procedure: Install the SCAP security guide package

From Systems Overview, select the client. Then click menu:[Software > Packages > Install].

Search for scap-security-guide and install the package suitable for your system. See the following table for package distribution requirements:

Table 1. SCAP security guide package requirements
Package name	Supported Systems
scap-security-guide	OpenSUSE, SLES12, SLES15
scap-security-guide-redhat	CentOS 7, CentOS 8, Fedora, Oracle Linux 7, Oracle Linux 8, RHEL7, RHEL8, RHEL9, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13, Red Hat Virtualization 4, Scientific Linux
scap-security-guide-debian	Debian 9, Debian 10
scap-security-guide-ubuntu	Ubuntu 16.04. Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04

2. Creating Ansible inventory files

Ansible Integration tools deploy a playbook as an inventory file. Therefore, you should create one inventory file for each distinct OS listed in Table 1.

Procedure: Creating the Ansible inventory files

Create and add your hosts to an inventory file to be managed by Ansible. The default path for an Ansible inventory is etc/ansible/hosts.

Listing 1. Inventory Example

client240.mgr.example.org
client241.mgr.example.org
client242.mgr.example.org
client243.mgr.example.org  ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/etc/ansible/some_ssh_key

[mygroup1]
client241.mgr.example.org
client242.mgr.example.org

[mygroup2]
client243.mgr.example.org

[all:vars]
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/etc/ansible/my_ansible_private_key

For additional playbook examples, see https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples.

Create the SSH keys that you are using in your inventory.
```
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ansible/my_ansible_private_key
```

Copy the generated SSH keys to the Ansible managed clients. Example:

ssh-copy-id -i /etc/ansible/my_ansible_private_key root@client240.mgr.example.org

Test that Ansible is working by executing the following commands from the control node:
```
ansible all -m ping
ansible mygroup1 -m ping
ansible client240.mgr.example.org -m ping
```

3. Add inventory files to the Ansible control node

Procedure: Adding Ansible inventory files to the control node

From the ansible control menu select: Ansible Control Node.
Under the Playbook Directories section add /usr/share/scap-security-guide/ansible to the Add a Playbook Directories field and then click Save.
Under Inventory Files add your inventory file locations to the Add an Inventory file field and click Save.
Listing 2. Examples
```
/etc/ansible/sles15
/etc/ansible/sles12
/etc/ansible/centos7
```

You may now run remediations For more information, see: Compliance as code.