Fully automated development environment for TechDufus on Twitch.

You can watch a quick 'tour' here on YouTube:

Goals

Provide fully automated Ubuntu development environment that is easy to set up and maintain.

Why Ansible?

Ansible replicates what we would do to set up a development environment pretty well. There are many automation solutions out there - I happen to enjoy using Ansible.

Requirements

Operating System

This Ansible playbook only supports Ubuntu distribution. This is by design to provide a consistent development experience across hosts.

System Upgrade

Verify your Ubuntu installation has all latest packages installed before running the playbook.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

NOTE: This will take some time.

Setup

all.yaml values file

The all.yaml file allows you to personalize your setup to your needs. This file will be created in the file located at ~/.dotfiles/group_vars/all.yaml after you Install this dotfiles and include your desired settings.

Below is a list of all available values. Not all are required but incorrect values will break the playbook if not properly set.

Name	Type	Required
git_user_email	string	yes
git_user_name	string	yes
exclude_roles	array (see group_vars/all)	no
ssh_key	dict (see SSH Keys below)	no
system_host	dict (see System Hosts below)	no
bash_public	dict (see Environment below)	no
bash_private	dict (see Environment below)	no

Environment

Manage environment variables by configuring the bash_public and bash_private values in values.yaml. See both values usecase below.

bash_public

The bash_public value allows you to include a dictionary of generic and unsecure key-value pairs that will be stored in a ~/.bash_public.

---
bash_public:
  MY_ENV_VAR: something

bash_private

The bash_private value allows you to include a dictionary of secure key-value pairs that will be stored in a ~/.bash_private.

---
bash_private:
  MY_ENV_VAR_SECRET: !vault |
    $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
    62333533626436313366316235626561626635396233303730343332666466393561346462303163
    3666636638613437353663356563656537323136646137630a336332303030323031376164316562
    65333963633339323382938472963766303966643035303234376163616239663539366564396166
    3830376265316231630a623834333061393138306331653164626437623337366165636163306237
    3437

SSH Keys

Manage SSH keys by setting the ssh_key value in values.yaml shown as example below:

---
ssh_key:
  <filename>: !vault |
    $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
    62333533626436313366316235626561626635396233303730343332666466393561346462303163
    3666636638613437483928376563656537323136646137630a336332303030323031376164316562
    65333963633339323762663865363766303966643035303234376163616239663539366564396166
    3830376265316231630a623834333061393138306331653164626437623337366165636163306237
    3437

NOTE: All ssh keys will be stored at $HOME/.ssh/<filename>.

System Hosts

Manage /etc/hosts by setting the system_host value in values.yaml.

---
system_host:
  127.0.0.1: foobar.localhost

Examples

Below includes minimal and advanced configuration examples. If you would like to see a more real world example take a look at blackglasses public configuration repository.

Minimal

Below is a minimal example of values.yaml file:

---
git_user_email: [email protected]
git_user_name: Foo Bar

Advanced

Below is a more advanced example of values.yaml file:

---
git_user_email: [email protected]
git_user_name: Foo Bar
exclude_roles:
  - slack
ssh_key: !vault |
  $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
  62333533626436313366316235626561626635396233303730343332666466393561346462303163
  3666636638613437353663356563656537323136646137630a336332303030323031376164316562
  65333963633339323762663865363766303966643035303234376163616239663539366564396166
  3830376265316231630a623834333061393138306331653164626437623337366165636163306237
  3437
system_host:
  127.0.0.1: foobar.localhost
bash_public:
  MY_PUBLIC_VAR: foobar
bash_private:
  MY_SECRET_VAR: !vault |
    $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
    62333533626436313366316235626561626635396233303730343332666466393561346462303163
    3666636638613437353663356563656537323136646137630a336332303030323031376164316562
    65333963633339323762663865363766303966643035303234376163616239663539366564396166
    3830376265316231630a623834333061393138306331653164626437623337366165636163306237
    3437

vault.secret

The vault.secret file allows you to encrypt values with Ansible vault and store them securely in source control. Create a file located at ~/.config/dotfiles/vault.secret with a secure password in it.

vim ~/.ansible-vault/vault.secret

To then encrypt values with your vault password use the following:

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-password-file $HOME/.ansible-vault/vault.secret "mynewsecret" --name "MY_SECRET_VAR"
$ cat myfile.conf | ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-password-file $HOME/.ansible-vault/vault.secret --stdin-name "myfile"

NOTE: This file will automatically be detected by the playbook when running dotfiles command to decrypt values. Read more on Ansible Vault here.

Usage

Install

This playbook includes a custom shell script located at bin/dotfiles. This script is added to your $PATH after installation and can be run multiple times while making sure any Ansible dependencies are installed and updated.

This shell script is also used to initialize your environment after installing Ubuntu and performing a full system upgrade as mentioned above.

NOTE: You must follow required steps before running this command or things may become unusable until fixed.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TechDufus/dotfiles/main/bin/dotfiles)"

If you want to run only a specific role, you can specify the following bash command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TechDufus/dotfiles/main/bin/dotfiles | bash -s -- --tags comma,seperated,tags

Update

This repository is continuously updated with new features and settings which become available to you when updating.

To update your environment run the dotfiles command in your shell:

dotfiles

This will handle the following tasks:

• Verify Ansible is up-to-date
• Generate SSH keys and add to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
• Clone this repository locally to ~/.dotfiles
• Verify any ansible-galaxy plugins are updated
• Run this playbook with the values in ~/.config/dotfiles/group_vars/all.yaml

This dotfiles command is available to you after the first use of this repo, as it adds this repo's bin directory to your path, allowing you to call dotfiles from anywhere.

Any flags or arguments you pass to the dotfiles command are passed as-is to the ansible-playbook command.

For Example: Running the tmux tag with verbosity

dotfiles -t tmux -vvv