The infrastructure setup for synhak.

Check http://synhak.org/wiki/Sysadmin#Ansible for more information about how this fits in at SYNHAK.

The Setup

Our infrastruture is written for ansible: http://ansible.cc

It might look a bit confusing at first, but here is the structure of the repository:

• config/ - Contains various server-side configuration templates and a few ansible-side variables.
• • config/sysadmins.yml - Defines the users who have ansible (and thus root) access.
• playbooks/ - Larger groups of plays that define what each role means
• • playbooks/master.yml - One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Updates all roles for all machines.
• plays/ - Logical units of role functionality that may or may not be shared between roles
• private/ - The actual security sensitive information that only root sysadmins should have access to and need to update. Kept in a private git repository on www-0.synhak.org.
• scripts/ - Scripts and things that keep SYNHAK ticking. Each one should be documented as to its purpose. Check in plays/ to see where each one fits in.
• sysadmin-keys/ - The public SSH keys of people with ansible access.

To use:

ansible-playbook -i hosts plays/some-action.yml

Or:

ansible-playbook -i hosts playbooks/some-role.yml

To get the private repo (has auth credentials and whatnot):

1.) Clone the main repo from https://github.com/SYNHAK/infrastructure 2.) cd infrastructure 3.) Set SSH to use your SYN/HAK Infrastructure keypair for all users on the synhak.org domain 4.) git submodule init 5.) git submodule update

Roles

There are currently three roles, and three servers.

www

Basic webservers. They are configured to run apache and serve over HTTP and HTTPS:

• Spiff
• The Wiki
• The contents of /var/www/html/
• Proxy to mail archives and mailman interface on www-0

mail

Mail host. There should only ever be one. It runs mailman, has mail aliases, and maintains the members list by poking Spiff.

kiosk

Any autonomous system for public interaction in the space itself. Such as kiosk and jukebox.

Setting up a new server

1. Add it to the hosts file under the appropriate role groups
2. ansible-playbook -i hosts -l the-hostname playbooks/master.yml
3. Stay Excellent