Category: Kubernetes

Back in November of 2022, I went about installing and configuring AWX in my home lab on Alma Linux 9, during that install I ran into and resolved a few minor issues during the install (see my last post: https://chr00t.com/installing-awx-on-almalinux-9/).

Earlier this week I decided to install AWX at my work since my testing at home went well. My reason for installing AWX at the office is I have been using Ansible cli for years, but would really like the gui interface for my junior admins to be able to use ansible without having to know how to use the cli especially if they are geared more towards windows.

This install went extremely smooth:

• After a fresh install of Alma, run updates: yum -y update
• Install tar & git: yum -y install tar git
• Disable firewall: systemctl disable firewalld –now
• Disable selinux via your favorite editor (mine is vi… vi 4 life lol): vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux
• reboot your system
• Install Kubernetes k3s: curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh –
• Download Kustumize: curl -s “https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/master/hack/install_kustomize.sh” | bash
• move kustomize executable: mv kustomize /usr/local/bin/
• you can check your k3s version via: kubectl version

You should see something like:
WARNING: This version information is deprecated and will be replaced with the output from kubectl version --short.  Use --output=yaml|json to get the full version.
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"25", GitVersion:"v1.25.5+k3s2", GitCommit:"de654222cb2c0c21776c32c26505fb684b246a1b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2023-01-11T21:23:33Z", GoVersion:"go1.19.4", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Kustomize Version: v4.5.7
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"25", GitVersion:"v1.25.5+k3s2", GitCommit:"de654222cb2c0c21776c32c26505fb684b246a1b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2023-01-11T21:23:33Z", GoVersion:"go1.19.4", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

• Now you can check your k3s environment status via: kubectl get nodes

You should see something like this:
NAME                    STATUS   ROLES                  AGE    VERSION
localhost.localdomain   Ready    control-plane,master   4d2h   v1.25.5+k3s2

• Create kustomization.yaml for initial creation of AWX operator pods: vi kustomization.yaml

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
  # Find the latest tag here: https://github.com/ansible/awx-operator/releases
  - github.com/ansible/awx-operator/config/default?ref=1.1.4
  
# Set the image tags to match the git version from above
images:
  - name: quay.io/ansible/awx-operator
    newTag: 1.1.4

# Specify a custom namespace in which to install AWX
namespace: awx

• Now that you have kustomization.yaml ready to go, you can start your initial operator of AWX:
• kustomize build . | kubectl apply -f –
• After running the above command you can check the status of the pods build via: kubectl get pods -n awx
• Once your awx operator pods are ready we can install your awx instance by 1st creating a file: vi awx-demo.yaml

---
apiVersion: awx.ansible.com/v1beta1
kind: AWX
metadata:
  name: awx
spec:
  service_type: nodeport
  nodeport_port: 30080
  #projects_persistence: true
  #projects_storage_class: rook-ceph
  #projects_storage_size: 10Gi

• Now we need to edit kustomization.yaml again: vi kustomization.yaml

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
  # Find the latest tag here: https://github.com/ansible/awx-operator/releases
  - github.com/ansible/awx-operator/config/default?ref=1.1.4
  - awx-demo.yaml

# Set the image tags to match the git version from above
images:
  - name: quay.io/ansible/awx-operator
    newTag: 1.1.4

# Specify a custom namespace in which to install AWX
namespace: awx

• Lets set the default naming via: kubectl config set-context –current –namespace=awx
• Now we we build our awx instance: kustomize build . | kubectl apply -f –
• The above step will take awhile, you can review the logs with the following command: kubectl logs -f deployments/awx-operator-controller-manager -c awx-manager
• You will need to watch the logs until you see: PLAY RECAP ******************************* localhost : ok =69 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0….etc….
• You will want to make sure you see no failed or unreachables, otherwise blow it away your awx operator and redploy/retry.
• Provided every thing went well, run: kubectl get pods -n awx

You should see something like:
NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
awx-postgres-13-0                                  1/1     Running   2 (43h ago)   4d4h
awx-67d97b57d9-hdtqb                               4/4     Running   8 (43h ago)   4d4h
awx-operator-controller-manager-78c7c99946-7dcm9   2/2     Running   8 (43h ago)   4d5h
[root@localhost ~]# ^C

• Lastly you will need to gather the temp password created during the install via: kubectl get secret awx-demo-admin-password -o jsonpath=”{.data.password}” | base64 –decode
• Now you can logon to your awx bild by opening your browser pointing to your servers ip: https://servernameorip:30080
• username will be admin and password will be the password you recieved by running: kubectl get secret awx-demo-admin-password -o jsonpath=”{.data.password}” | base64 –decode

If you are unfamiliar with AWX itself, I recommend watching the following video: