this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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I have a few VMs and PMs around the house that I'd setup over time and I'd now like to rebuild some, not to mention just simplify the whole lot.

How the hell do I get from a working system to an equivalent ansible playbook without many (MANY) iterations of trial & error - and potentially destroying the running system??

Ducking around didn't really show much so I'm either missing a concept / keyword, or, no-one does this.

Pointers?

TIA

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

@Cyber Yeah it's gonna be pretty manual as others have mentioned. Some areas to look at:
- Filesystem provisioning, mounts, etc.
- Packages
- Users, groups
- Time zone, locale language, time format etc.
- /etc/
- /root/ and /home/
- SSH settings
- Services
- Cron jobs/systemd timers

There is a bit of overlap between some of those categories. Some bits are going to see more or less use on VMs vs physical. And remember that in ansible there are built in modules for a lot of functionality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Hadn't thought about all the locale, etc.... good point, thanks