Automating my own computer configuration

I have scripted most of my system configuration using Ansible (a powerful, but surprisingly easy to learn tool for automation, remote execution and configuration management). This allows me to setup new workstations easily, and to keep settings of all my accounts in sync.

Is it worth it?

It depends. If you only use one machine, it's nice to have an authoritative source of information on what you install and configure on a new system, but this only pays off if you reinstall often (say, every couple months?).

If you have two machines - or two user accounts, for work and personal stuff, as I do - synchronizing configuration becomes an issue and it may be worth the effort to automate it.

If you have more than two machines (or accounts)... you know the answer already :-)

Interesting features

• different configuration variants for personal and work user,
• automated installation of some programs that are not readily available from apt repositories (e.g. Vagrant which has to be downloaded from its website, Ansible itself which I install from a PPA and add a couple of plugins),
• tasks that can manage desktop environment settings without access to X server,
• custom keyboard configuration with variations for each machine,
• (planned) integration with pass password manager

Requirements

Debian-based Linux. I use Linux Mint, but it should also work without problems on Ubuntu (please open an issue if it doesn't!). Adapting this to work on OSX as well would require some work, but if anyone would be interested I'm open to pull requests.

Usage

There are two kinds of machines:

• masters: my own computers. Each of them has a clone of this repository and can run ansible playbooks to configure itself and other hosts (including other masters).

• slaves: servers I have access to, my family's computers, my accounts on other people's computers. I don't run ansible from them.

Setting up a new master

To bootstrap a completely new machine, run:

sudo apt-get --yes install git
cd ~/.config
git clone https://github.com/janek-warchol/ansible-system-setup
./ansible-system-setup/bootstrap.sh

bootstrap.sh ensures that the machine can ssh into itself and that it has Ansible installed.

After that, update the inventory file and you're ready to run Ansible playbooks.

Setting up a new slave

1. Add it to the inventory file (and master(s)' /etc/hosts if appropriate)
2. Install an SSH server, e.g. sudo apt-get install openssh-server
3. Copy your public key to authorized keys e.g. using ssh-copy-id

Running ansible

Run Ansible playbooks like this (you can omit sudo prompt for some of them):

ansible-playbook -i inventory install-software.yml --ask-sudo-pass

Note that some roles require packages that are installed by install-software role, so you should run it first. In particular, most of the roles require git. I could have added git installation task to the roles that need it, but doing so would require me to type my sudo password every time I wanted to run them - and I'm too lazy for that.

Forking

You are encouraged to fork this repo and use it as a basis for your own system provisioning! Some things that you will have to change:

• replace information about my hosts in inventory file with your own
• replace public keys installed by user-config role

License

MIT license.