Creating a template for a kickstart file

A template is one of the core modules of Ansible. It is used to easily generate files (for example, configuration files) based on a common set of facts. It uses the Jinja2 template engine to interpret template files.

For this recipe, we'll use a simple kickstart script that is generic enough to deploy any host. Refer to Chapter 2, Deploying RHEL "En Masse", to find out about kickstart files.

Getting ready

The facts that we need for this host are repo_url, root_password_hash, ntp_servers, timezone, ipv4_address, ipv4_netmask, ipv4_gateway, and dns_servers.

How to do it…

Create the kickstart file in your playbook's template folder (~/playbooks/templates/kickstart/rhel7.ks) with the following content:

install
url --url={{ repo_url }}
skipx
text
reboot
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
selinux --enforcing
firewall --enabled --ssh
rootpw –iscrypted {{ root_password_hash }}
authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha512
timezone --utc --ntpservers {{ ntp_servers|join...