Ubuntu Setup Before Running Ansible

Digital Ocean

Right after creating the droplet, they don’t have an user account to login other than root. So you’d have to create an user and give ssh access

1. Login as root first and create ubuntu user

   adduser ubuntu
   usermod -aG sudo ubuntu
   

2. Set up a Basic Firewall

   ufw allow OpenSSH
   ufw enable
   ufw status
   

3. move the ssh key that’s assigned to the root

   rsync -avr --chown=ubuntu:ubuntu ~/.ssh /home/ubuntu
   

4. Make the user sudo without typing password

   visudo
   # add this line at the bottom
   ubuntu    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
   

VMware

Right after creating the VM, they only allow ssh login with password. So you’d have to change sshd config to login with your ssh key

1. Copy the ssh key to VM from my local machine

   rsync -avr ~/.ssh/id.pub [email protected]:~/.ssh/authorized_keys
   

2. Login as ubuntu user with password
3. Sudo to root and change sshd_config

   sudo su -
   nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
   # change these settings
   ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
   PasswordAuthentication no
   UsePAM no
   PermitRootLogin no
   PermitRootLogin prohibit-password
   

4. Make the user sudo without typing password

   visudo
   # add this line at the bottom
   ubuntu    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
   

5. restart the VM

   reboot now
   

Now the machines are ready to run ansible

Michael Kang

Senior Software Engineer with 18 years of experiences wearing multiple hats. Full stack engineer with computer graphics background