Exercise3.md

Exercise: Configuring Users with Ansible

Objective: Create an Ansible playbook that configures user accounts on target servers based on variables, and includes conditionals and loops.

Broken Playbook Template:

---
- name: Configure Users
  hosts: target_servers
  become: true

  vars:
    users:
      - name: alice
        state: present
        groups: developers
      - name: bob
        state: present
        groups: administrators

  tasks:
    - name: Create or remove users
      user:
        name: "{{ item.name }}"
        state: "{{ item.state }}"
        groups: "{{ item.groups }}"
      with_items: "{{ users }}"

Instructions for Participants:

1. Review the provided broken_deploy_users.yml playbook.
2. Identify and fix the intentional errors in the playbook.
3. Run the corrected playbook against your target servers.

   ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini fixed_deploy_users.yml

4. Verify that user accounts are configured as expected on the target servers.

Discussion Points:

• How are variables used to define user configurations in Ansible?
• What is the purpose of the with_items directive, and how does it relate to loops?
• How are conditionals used in Ansible playbooks, and where do you find them in this exercise?

Common Errors:

1. Incorrect indentation
2. Typos in variable names
3. Missing quotes around variable values
4. Incorrect use of with_items