Ansible Navigator is a tool and a part of the Ansible Automation Platform, which helps in creating playbooks. The content navigator can install it via the Python pip method. we can say the automation platform is a combination of different components like Ansible core and automation execution environment. The playbook run functionality is provided by core packages. Through the core package, ansible provides a large number of modules.
Here I am discussing two major components of the Automation Platform. The Content Navigator and Execution Environment installation and setup.
Ansible Navigator and Execution Environment
Navigator is a utility, which manages the work of different Ansible components like ansible-playbook, ansible-config, and inventory. The execution environment is a container form image that consists of different components like libraries, core packages, and ansible collections, which need to run your playbooks.
How do navigator and execution environments work?
When running a playbook, the operator chooses the environment.This environment is used for processing modules, collections, and libraries.
Installing ansible-navigator with an execution environment ( ee ) on Linux
Installing a navigator on the main control system machine allows me to manage remote hosts. The execution environment requires a container image . Podman or Docker . This process works for various Linux-based operating systems . Named CentOS Stream Rocky AlmaLinux and Oracle Linux Ubuntu . Only one of the utilities will be installed.
For the Docker, utility , Follow the Docker for Linux installation instructions.
OR
1. Below command will install the Podman utility .
# sudo dnf install podman
For Ubuntu :
# sudo apt-get install podman
2. Now navigator package will be installed through the Python package manager through the pip utility.
# sudo dnf install python3-pip
Below command is for Ubuntu Users:
# sudo apt install python3-pip
3. Installing navigator :
# python3 -m pip install ansible-navigator --user
4. Now add the installation path :
# echo 'export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
5. Refresh the environment variable.
#source ~/.profile
6. Verify that the automation content navigator is installed on the system.
# ansible-navigator --version
7. Now after the installation of the utility the execution environment container image will be downloaded. Installed through the ansible-navigator image command will download the image.
# ansible-navigator images
Press Esc to exit from the container images. Or you can execute only the ansible-navigator command to only install the container image.
# ansible-navigator
