Ansible Lab – OCI Server Setup

Minimal Ansible project for provisioning and maintaining an Oracle Linux instance (OCI).

Designed to be:

• reproducible
• easy to understand
• easy to tear down and rebuild

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Overview

This repo contains:

• site.yml – main playbook (base + dotfiles + hardening)

• fail2ban-setup.yml – standalone Fail2ban install/config

• roles/

  • base – core system setup (firewalld, chrony, timezone)
  • dotfiles – user environment (vim, tmux, git, symlinks)
  • hardening – security-related tasks (in progress)

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Requirements

• Control node: Linux / WSL with Python 3
• Target: Oracle Linux (OCI)
• SSH key access to target host

Install Ansible (recommended via venv):

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install ansible

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Inventory

Copy the template and edit:

cp inventory.ini.tmplt inventory.ini

Example:

[oci]
YOUR_HOSTNAME ansible_host=YOUR_IP ansible_user=YOUR_USER ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa

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Usage

Run full setup:

ansible-playbook site.yml

Run specific components:

ansible-playbook site.yml --tags base
ansible-playbook site.yml --tags dotfiles
ansible-playbook site.yml --tags "base,hardening"

Run standalone Fail2ban setup:

ansible-playbook fail2ban-setup.yml

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Project Structure

.
├── ansible.cfg
├── inventory.ini.tmplt
├── inventory.ini        (local, not committed)
├── site.yml
├── fail2ban-setup.yml
├── roles/
│   ├── base/
│   ├── dotfiles/
│   └── hardening/
└── .venv/   (ignored)

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Notes

• .venv/ is not committed (reproducible via pip)
• inventory.ini is not committed (contains host-specific info)
• Dotfiles are symlinked from ~/dotfiles repo on the target host
• Tasks are idempotent where possible

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Safety

• No secrets are stored in this repo
• SSH keys are referenced, not included
• Add your IP to Fail2ban ignoreip to avoid lockout

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Troubleshooting

Check connectivity:

ansible oci -m ping

Verbose output:

ansible-playbook site.yml -vvv

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Future Work

• Expand hardening role (SSH config, audit rules)
• Template-based configs instead of inline content
• Multi-host inventory support

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Philosophy

Keep it simple:

• small roles
• readable tasks
• minimal magic

If it can’t be understood in a few minutes, it’s too complicated.