Installation

You can install the IBM Power Systems AIX collection using one of these options: Ansible Galaxy, Ansible Automation Hub, or a local build.

For more information on installing collections, see using collections.

Ansible Galaxy

Galaxy enables you to quickly configure your automation project with content from the Ansible community.

Galaxy provides prepackaged units of work known as collections. You can use the ansible-galaxy command with the option install to install a collection on your system (control node) hosted in Galaxy.

By default, the ansible-galaxy command installs the latest available collection, but you can add a version identifier to install a specific version. Before installing a collection from Galaxy, review all the available versions. Periodically, new releases containing enhancements and features you might be interested in become available.

The ansible-galaxy command ignores any pre-release versions unless the == range identifier is set to that pre-release version. A pre-release version is denoted by appending a hyphen and a series of dot separated identifiers immediately following the patch version. The IBM Power Systems AIX collection releases collections with the pre-release naming convention such as 1.0.0-beta1 that would require a range identifier.

Here is an example of installing a pre-release collection:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.power_aix:==1.0.0-beta1

If you have installed a prior version, you must overwrite an existing collection with the --force option.

Here are a few examples of installing the IBM Power Systems AIX collection:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.power_aix
$ ansible-galaxy collection install -f ibm.power_aix
$ ansible-galaxy collection install --force ibm.power_aix

The collection installation progress will be output to the console. Note the location of the installation so that you can review other content included with the collection, such as the sample playbook. By default, collections are installed in ~/.ansible/collections; see the sample output.

Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Installing 'ibm.power_aix:1.0.0' to '/Users/user/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix'

After installation, the collection content will resemble this hierarchy: :

├── collections/
│  ├── ansible_collections/
│      ├── ibm/
│          ├── power_aix/
│              ├── docs/
│              ├── playbooks/
│                  ├── group_vars/
│                  ├── host_vars/
│              ├── plugins/
│                  ├── action/
│                  ├── module_utils/
│                  ├── modules/
│                  └── filter/

You can use the -p option with ansible-galaxy to specify the installation path, such as:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.power_aix -p /home/ansible/collections

When using the -p option to specify the install path, use one of the values configured in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, as this is where Ansible itself will expect to find collections.

For more information on installing collections with Ansible Galaxy, see installing collections.

Automation Hub and Private Galaxy server

Configuring access to a private Galaxy server follows the same instructions that you would use to configure your client to point to Automation Hub. When hosting a private Galaxy server or pointing to Hub, available content is not always consistent with what is available on the community Galaxy server.

You can use the ansible-galaxy command with the option install to install a collection on your system (control node) hosted in Automation Hub or a private Galaxy server.

By default, the ansible-galaxy command is configured to access https://galaxy.ansible.com as the server when you install a collection. The ansible-galaxy client can be configured to point to Hub or other servers, such as a privately running Galaxy server, by configuring the server list in the ansible.cfg file.

Ansible searches for ansible.cfg in the following locations in this order:

  • ANSIBLE_CONFIG (environment variable if set)

  • ansible.cfg (in the current directory)

  • ~/.ansible.cfg (in the home directory)

  • /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

To configure a Galaxy server list in the ansible.cfg file:

  • Add the server_list option under the [galaxy] section to one or more server names.

  • Create a new section for each server name.

  • Set the url option for each server name.

For Automation Hub, you additionally need to:

The following example shows a configuration for Automation Hub, a private running Galaxy server, and Galaxy:

[galaxy]
server_list = automation_hub, galaxy, private_galaxy

[galaxy_server.automation_hub]
url=https://cloud.redhat.com/api/automation-hub/
auth_url=https://sso.redhat.com/auth/realms/redhat-external/protocol/openid-connect/token
token=<hub_token>

[galaxy_server.galaxy]
url=https://galaxy.ansible.com/

[galaxy_server.private_galaxy]
url=https://galaxy-dev.ansible.com/
token=<private_token>

For more configuration information, see configuring the ansible-galaxy client and Ansible Configuration Settings.

Local build

You can use the ansible-galaxy collection install command to install a collection built from source. Version builds are available in the builds directory of the IBM ansible-power-aix Git repository. The archives can be installed locally without having to use Hub or Galaxy.

To install a build from the ansible-power-aix Git repository:

  1. Obtain a local copy from the Git repository:

    Note

    • Collection archive names will change depending on the release version.

    • They adhere to this convention <namespace>-<collection>-<version>.tar.gz, for example, ibm-power_aix-1.0.0.tar.gz

  2. Install the local collection archive:

    $ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm-power_aix-1.0.0.tar.gz

    In the output of collection installation, note the installation path to access the sample playbook:

    Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Installing 'ibm.power_aix:1.0.0' to '/Users/user/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/power_aix'

    You can use the -p option with ansible-galaxy to specify the installation path, for example, ansible-galaxy collection install ibm-power_aix-1.0.0.tar.gz -p /home/ansible/collections.

    For more information, see installing collections with Ansible Galaxy.