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Scripting Administration Tasks with Ansible

Ansible's ad hoc commands aren't typically used for automation, but they can be powerful tools for running a command across an inventory and getting the desired results. In this lab we'll expand on how to use shell scripting with ad hoc commands to speed up administration tasks. *This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

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Path Info

Level
Clock icon Intermediate
Duration
Clock icon 30m
Last updated
Clock icon Sep 01, 2025

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Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Write the Script

    The script could look something like to this:

    for i in webserver1 dbserver1 adminserver1;
       do ssh ansible@$i "sudo tar -czf messages.tar.gz /var/log/messages";
    done
       
    ansible -m fetch -a "src=/home/ansible/messages.tar.gz dest=/tmp/messages" all
    

    But there are thousands of ways to accomplish this with a combination of Bash and Ansible. As long as we write something that archives and compresses the log file, then delivers it to the right directory, we've accomplished the task.

  2. Challenge

    Execute the Script and Ensure There are No Errors

    As long as we don't have any errors in the script's output, we should be fine. Good job!

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