Hack The Sec-Leading Resource Of Linux Tutorial

How to Find and Sort Files Based on Modification Date and Time in Linux

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
<h1 class="post-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
Find and Sort Files Based on Modification Date and Time in Linux</h1>
</div>
Usually, we are in habit of saving a lot of information in form of files on our system. Some, hidden files, some kept in a separate folder created for our ease of understanding, while some as it is. But, this whole stuff fills our directories; usually desktop, making it look like a mess. But, the problem arises when we need to search for a particular file modified on particular date and time in this huge collection. 
 
People comfortable with GUI’s can find it using File Manager, which lists files in long listing format, making it easy to figure out what we wanted, but those users having habit of black screens, or even anyone working on servers which are devoid of GUI’s would want a simple command or set of commands that could ease out their search. 
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgaDHMxLVbKkekSaxSOCOHR6OfuYBwB4Bm4OaAeVZSBRy4XqzmGC4czDQ93uBtVjDezSognHDDNUlUilGN3vXmEc9i9ZSm3TtySISLzJk0qxw5r2tXGYjJx7rwiYq3tq5-2JnlCZoU15I/s1600/find_www.hackthesec.co.in.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgaDHMxLVbKkekSaxSOCOHR6OfuYBwB4Bm4OaAeVZSBRy4XqzmGC4czDQ93uBtVjDezSognHDDNUlUilGN3vXmEc9i9ZSm3TtySISLzJk0qxw5r2tXGYjJx7rwiYq3tq5-2JnlCZoU15I/s1600/find_www.hackthesec.co.in.jpg" /></a></div>
<div>
 </div>
<div>
Real beauty of Linux shows here, as Linux has a collection of commands which if used separately or together can help to search for a file, or sort a collection of files according to their name, date of modification, time of creation, or even any filter you could think of applying to get your result. 
 
Here, we will unveil the real strength of Linux by examining a set of commands which can help sorting a file or even a list of files by Date and Time. 
 
Linux Utilities to Sort Files in Linux</div>
</div>
<div>
Some basic Linux command line utilities that are just sufficient for sorting a directory based on Date and Time are: 
<pre style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #3c3c3c; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(229, 229, 229); margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">ls command</pre>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
ls – Listing contents of directory, this utility can list the files and directories and can even list all the status information about them including: date and time of modification or access, permissions, size, owner, group etc. 
<pre style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #3c3c3c; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(229, 229, 229); margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">sort command</pre>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
sort – This command can be used to sort the output of any search just by any field or any particular column of the field. 
 
These commands are in themselves very powerful commands to master if you work on black screens and have to deal with lots of files, just to get the one you want. 
 
Some Ways to Sort Files using Date and Time 
Below are the list of commands to sort based on Date and Time. 
 
1. List Files Based on Modification Time</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The below command lists files in long listing format, and sorts files based on modification time, newest first. To sort in reverse order, use <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'-r'</code> switch with this command.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># ls -lt

total 673768
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3312130 Jan 19 15:24 When You Are Gone.MP3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4177212 Jan 19 15:24 When I Dream At Night - Marc Anthony-1.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4177212 Jan 19 15:24 When I Dream At Night - Marc Anthony.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 6629090 Jan 19 15:24 Westlife_Tonight.MP3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3448832 Jan 19 15:24 We Are The World by USA For Africa (Michael Jackson).mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 8580934 Jan 19 15:24 This Love.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 2194832 Jan 19 15:24 The Cross Of Changes.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 5087527 Jan 19 15:24 T.N.T. For The Brain 5.18.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3437100 Jan 19 15:24 Summer Of '69.MP3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4360278 Jan 19 15:24 Smell Of Desire.4.32.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4582632 Jan 19 15:24 Silence Must Be Heard 4.46.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4147119 Jan 19 15:24 Shadows In Silence 4.19.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4189654 Jan 19 15:24 Sarah Brightman & Enigma - Eden (remix).mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4124421 Jan 19 15:24 Sade - Smooth Operator.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 4771840 Jan 19 15:24 Sade - And I Miss You.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3749477 Jan 19 15:24 Run To You.MP3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 7573679 Jan 19 15:24 Roger Sanchez_Another Chance_Full_Mix.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3018211 Jan 19 15:24 Principal Of Lust.3.08.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 5688390 Jan 19 15:24 Please Forgive Me.MP3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3381827 Jan 19 15:24 Obvious.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 5499073 Jan 19 15:24 Namstey-London-Viraaniya.mp3
-rwxr----- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 3129210 Jan 19 15:24 MOS-Enya - Only Time (Pop Radio mix).m</pre>
</div>
<div>
<div>
2. List Files Based on Last Access Time 
Listing of files in directory based on last access time, i.e. based on time the file was last accessed, not modified.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># ls -ltu

total 3084272
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:24 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Linux-ISO
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Music-Player
drwx------ 3 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 tor-browser_en-US
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 bin
drwxr-xr-x 11 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Android Games
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Songs
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 renamefiles
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 katoolin-master
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Tricks
drwxr-xr-x 3 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 Linux-Tricks
drwxr-xr-x 6 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 tuptime
drwxr-xr-x 4 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 xdm
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 20480 Jan 19 15:22 ffmpeg usage
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:22 xdm-helper
</pre>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
3. List Files Based on Last Modification Time 
Listing of files in directory based on last modification time of file’s status information, or the <code style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(246, 246, 248); border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: 'courier 10 pitch', courier, monospace; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'ctime'</code>. This command would list that file first whose any status information like: owner, group, permissions, size etc has been recently changed.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># ls -ltc

total 3084272
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 15:24 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 13:05 img
-rw------- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 262191 Jan 19 12:15 hackthesec.jpeg
drwxr-xr-x 5 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 19 10:57 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 7 hackthesec hackthesec 12288 Jan 18 16:00 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x 13 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 18 15:36 VirtualBox VMs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 hackthesec hackthesec 691 Jan 13 14:57 special.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 654325 Jan 4 16:55 powertop-2.7.tar.gz.save
-rw-r--r-- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 654329 Jan 4 11:17 filename.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 3 hackthesec hackthesec 4096 Jan 4 11:04 powertop-2.7
-rw-r--r-- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 447795 Dec 31 14:22 Happy-New-Year-2016.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 12 Dec 18 18:46 ravi
-rw-r--r-- 1 hackthesec hackthesec 1823 Dec 16 12:45 setuid.txt </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
If  <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'-a'</code> switch is used with above commands, they can list and sort even the hidden files in current directory, and. <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'-r'</code> switch lists the output in reverse order. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
For more in-depth sorting, like sorting on Output of find command, however  <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">ls</code> can also be used, but there  <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'sort'</code> proves more helpful as the output may not have only file name but any fields desired by user. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Below commands show usage of <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">sort</code> with <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">find</code> command to sort the list of files based on Date and Time. 
4. Sorting Files based on Month</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Here, we use <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">find</code> command to find all files in root <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(‘/’)</code> and then print the result as: Month in which file was accessed and then filename. Of that complete result, here we list out top 11 entries.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%Ab %p" | head -n 11

Dec /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install
Dec /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
Apr /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
Apr /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
Apr /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0
Apr /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
Dec /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The below command sorts the output using key as first field, specified by<code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'-k1'</code> and then it sorts on Month as specified by <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'M'</code> ahead of it.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%Ab %p" | head -n 11 | sort -k1M

Apr /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
Apr /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
Apr /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0
Apr /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
Nov /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn
Dec /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
Dec /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
Dec /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
5. Sort Files Based on Date 
Here, again we use  <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">find</code> command to find all the files in root directory, but now we will print the result as: last date the file was accessed, last time the file was accessed and then filename. Of that we take out top 11 entries.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%AD %AT %p" | head -n 11

12/08/15 11:30:38.0000000000 /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install
12/07/15 10:34:45.2694776230 /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
04/11/15 06:08:34.9819910430 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
04/11/15 06:08:34.9939910430 /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
04/11/15 06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0
04/11/15 06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
12/18/15 11:19:25.2656728990 /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The below sort command first sorts on basis of last digit of the year, then sorts on basis of last digit of month in reverse order and finally sorts on basis of first field. Here, '1.8' means 8th column of first field and ‘n’ ahead of it means numerical sort, while 'r' indicates reverse order sorting.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%AD %AT %p" | head -n 11 | sort -k1.8n -k1.1nr -k1

12/07/15 10:34:45.2694776230 /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
12/08/15 11:30:38.0000000000 /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install
12/18/15 11:19:25.2656728990 /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
11/12/15 12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn
04/11/15 06:08:34.9819910430 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
04/11/15 06:08:34.9939910430 /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
04/11/15 06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
04/11/15 06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Here,again we use <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">find</code> command to list out top 11 files in root directory and print the result in format: last time file was accessed and then filename.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%AT %p" | head -n 11

11:30:38.0000000000 /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install
10:34:45.2694776230 /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
06:08:34.9819910430 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
06:08:34.9939910430 /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0
06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
11:19:25.2656728990 /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The below command sorts the output based on first column of the first field of the output which is first digit of hour.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># find / -type f -printf "\n%AT %p" | head -n 11 | sort -k1.1n

06:08:34.9819910430 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMCPro.so.1.0.0
06:08:34.9939910430 /usr/lib/libt1.so.5.1.2
06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libcdr-0.0.so.0.0.15
06:08:35.0099910420 /usr/lib/libchromeXvMC.so.1.0.0
10:34:45.2694776230 /usr/lib/libcpufreq.so.0.0.0
11:19:25.2656728990 /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
11:30:38.0000000000 /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf32_x86_64.xr
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/elf_i386.xbn
12:56:34.0000000000 /usr/lib/ldscripts/i386linux.xn</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
7. Sorting Ouptut of ls -l based on Date 
This command sorts the output of <code style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f6f6f8; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(158, 158, 159); color: #3b5999; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: auto; padding: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">'ls -l'</code> command based on 6th field month wise, then based on 7th field which is date, numerically.</div>
<pre style="background-color: #051e30; border-color: rgb(40, 159, 244); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; color: white; font-family: 'Courier 10 Pitch', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; padding: 10px 10px 10px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"># ls -l | sort -k6M -k7n

total 116
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 1 19:51 backup.tgz
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 7 15:27 Desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15853 Oct 7 15:19 powertop_report.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 79112 Oct 7 15:25 powertop.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 16 15:26 file3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13 Oct 16 15:17 B
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21 Oct 16 15:16 A
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 Oct 16 15:38 C</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Conclusion 
Likewise, by having some knowledge of sort command, you can sort almost any listing based on any field and even its any column you desire. These were some of tricks to help you sort files based on Date or Time. You can have your own tricks build based on these. However, if you have any other interesting trick, you can always mention that in your comments. 
<div style="color: #272727; line-height: 28.8px;">
<a href="http://www.hackthesec.co.in/">www.hackthesec.co.in</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

How to Find and Sort Files Based on Modification Date and Time in Linux

Find and Sort Files Based on Modification Date and Time in Linux Usually, we are in habit of saving a lot of information in form of fil...

Install Ansible Configuration Management And IT Automation Tool

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Today I will be talking about ansible, a powerful configuration management solution written in python. There are many configuration management solutions available, all with pros and cons, ansible stands apart from many of them for its simplicity. What makes ansible different than many of the most popular configuration management systems is that its agent-less, no need to setup agents on every node you want to control. Plus, this has the benefit of being able to control you entire infrastructure from more than one place, if needed. That last point's validity, of being a benefit, may be debatable but I find it as a positive in most cases. Enough talk, lets get started with Ansible installation and configuration on a RHEL/CentOS, and Debian/Ubuntu based systems.</h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbiLZPmGVCK0ersPpoT66PJjAqRnSCG99lp9Zr8FdTbr-dJO_1HyqgNr7s6LuDJT_cZLQe9XOFky401_42pMqX5AgXEa8Xhmhio91OPhnMIZx-JyjZL9ERRlwwuv3BD3LQCgZuqQGOiHo/s1600/Ansible_Linux_www.hackthesec.co.in.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbiLZPmGVCK0ersPpoT66PJjAqRnSCG99lp9Zr8FdTbr-dJO_1HyqgNr7s6LuDJT_cZLQe9XOFky401_42pMqX5AgXEa8Xhmhio91OPhnMIZx-JyjZL9ERRlwwuv3BD3LQCgZuqQGOiHo/s320/Ansible_Linux_www.hackthesec.co.in.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
</h2>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Prerequisites</h2>
<ol style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 27px 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">Distro: RHEL/CentOS/Debian/Ubuntu Linux</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">Jinja2</kbd>: A modern and designer friendly templating language for Python.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">PyYAML</kbd>: A YAML parser and emitter for the Python programming language.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">parmiko</kbd>: Native Python SSHv2 protocol library.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">httplib2</kbd>: A comprehensive HTTP client library.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">Most of the actions listed in this post are written with the assumption that they will be executed by the root user running the bash or any other modern shell.</li>
</ol>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
How Ansible works</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Ansible tool uses no agents. It requires no additional custom security infrastructure, so it’s easy to deploy. All you need is ssh client and server:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> +----------------------+ +---------------+
 |Linux/Unix workstation| SSH | file_server1 |
 |with Ansible |<------------------>| db_server2 | Unix/Linux servers
 +----------------------+ Modules | proxy_server3 | in local/remote
 192.168.1.100 +---------------+ data centers
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Where,</div>
<ol style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 27px 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">192.168.1.100 - Install Ansible on your local workstation/server.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">file_server1..proxy_server3 - Use 192.168.1.100 and Ansible to automates configuration management of all servers.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">SSH - Setup ssh keys between 192.168.1.100 and local/remote servers.</li>
</ol>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Ansible Installation Tutorial</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Installation of ansible is a breeze, many distributions have a package available in their 3rd party repos which can easily be installed, a quick alternative is to just pip install it or grab the latest copy from github. To install using your package manager, on RHEL/CentOS Linux based systems you will most likely need the EPEL repo then:</div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Install ansible on a RHEL/CentOS Linux based system</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Type the following yum command: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ sudo yum install ansible</code></div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Install ansible on a Debian/Ubuntu Linux based system</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Type the following apt-get command: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install ansible</code></div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Install ansible using pip</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
The pip command is a tool for installing and managing Python packages, such as those found in the Python Package Index. The following method works on Linux and Unix-like systems: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ sudo pip install ansible</code></div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Install the latest version of ansible using source code</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
You can install the latest version from github as follows: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ cd ~ $ git clone git://github.com/ansible/ansible.git $ cd ./ansible $ source ./hacking/env-setup</code> 
When running ansible from a git checkout, one thing to remember is that you will need to setup your environment everytime you want to use it, or you can add it to your bash rc file: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;"># ADD TO BASH RC $ echo "export ANSIBLE_HOSTS=~/ansible_hosts" >> ~/.bashrc $ echo "source ~/ansible/hacking/env-setup" >> ~/.bashrc</code> 
The hosts file for ansible is basically a list of hosts that ansible is able to perform work on. By default ansible looks for the hosts file at /etc/ansible/hosts, but there are ways to override that which can be handy if you are working with multiple installs or have several different clients for whose datacenters you are responsible for. You can pass the hosts file on the command line using the <kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">-i</kbd> option: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m shell -a "hostname" --ask-pass -i /etc/some/other/dir/ansible_hosts</code> 
My preference however is to use and environment variable, this can be useful if source a different file when starting work for a specific client. The environment variable is $ANSIBLE_HOSTS, and can be set as follows: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ export ANSIBLE_HOSTS=~/ansible_hosts</code> 
Once all requirements are installed and you have you hosts file setup you can give it a test run. For a quick test I put 127.0.0.1 into the ansible hosts file as follow: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ echo "127.0.0.1" > ~/ansible_hosts</code> 
Now lets test with a quick ping: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m ping</code> 
OR ask for the ssh password: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m ping --ask-pass</code> 
I have run across a problem a few times regarding initial setup, it is highly recommended you setup keys for ansible to use but in the previous test we used <kbd style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">--ask-pass</kbd>, on some machines you will need to install sshpass or add a -c paramiko like so: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m ping --ask-pass -c paramiko</code> 
Or you can install sshpass, however sshpass is not always available in the standard repos so paramiko can be easier.</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Setup SSH Keys</h2>
-c and <kbd style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">--ask-pass</kbd> options: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ssh-keygen -t rsa</code> 
Sample outputs: 
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
94:a0:19:02:ba:25:23:7f:ee:6c:fb:e8:38:b4:f2:42 info@hackthesec.co.in
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|... . . |
|. . + . . |
|= . o o |
|.* . |
|. . . S |
| E.o |
|.. .. |
|o o+.. |
| +o+*o. |
+-----------------+
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Now obviously there are plenty of ways to put this in place on the remote machine but since we are using ansible, lets use that: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m copy -a "src=/home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.pub dest=/tmp/id_rsa.pub" --ask-pass -c paramiko</code></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">SSH password:
127.0.0.1 | success >> {
 "changed": true,
 "dest": "/tmp/id_rsa.pub",
 "gid": 100,
 "group": "users",
 "md5sum": "bafd3fce6b8a33cf1de415af432774b4",
 "mode": "0644",
 "owner": "hackthesec",
 "size": 410,
 "src": "/home/hackthesec/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1407008170.46-208759459189201/source",
 "state": "file",
 "uid": 1000
}</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Next, add the public key in remote server, enter: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m shell -a "cat /tmp/id_rsa.pub >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys" --ask-pass -c paramiko</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">SSH password:
127.0.0.1 | FAILED | rc=1 >>
/bin/sh: /root/.ssh/authorized_keys: Permission denied
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Whoops, we want to be able to run things as root, so lets add a -u option: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m shell -a "cat /tmp/id_rsa.pub >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys" --ask-pass -c paramiko -u root</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">SSH password:
127.0.0.1 | success | rc=0 >>
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Please note, I wanted to demonstrate a file transfer using ansible, there is however a more built in way for managing keys using ansible: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m authorized_key -a "user=hackthesec key='{{ lookup('file', '/home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.pub') }}' path=/home/hackthesec/.ssh/authorized_keys manage_dir=no" --ask-pass -c paramiko</code></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">SSH password:
127.0.0.1 | success >> {
 "changed": true,
 "gid": 100,
 "group": "users",
 "key": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCq+Z8/usprXk0aCAPyP0TGylm2MKbmEsHePUOd7p5DO1QQTHak+9gwdoJJavy0yoUdi+C+autKjvuuS+vGb8+I+8mFNu5CvKiZzIpMjZvrZMhHRdNud7GuEanusTEJfi1pUd3NA2iXhl4a6S9a/4G2mKyf7QQSzI4Z5ddudUXd9yHmo9Yt48/ASOJLHIcYfSsswOm8ux1UnyeHqgpdIVONVFsKKuSNSvZBVl3bXzhkhjxz8RMiBGIubJDBuKwZqNSJkOlPWYN76btxMCDVm07O7vNChpf0cmWEfM3pXKPBq/UBxyG2MgoCGkIRGOtJ8UjC/daadBUuxg92/u01VNEB hackthesec@hackthesec.co.in",
 "key_options": null,
 "keyfile": "/home/hackthesec/.ssh/authorized_keys",
 "manage_dir": false,
 "mode": "0600",
 "owner": "hackthesec",
 "path": "/home/hackthesec/.ssh/authorized_keys",
 "size": 410,
 "state": "file",
 "uid": 1000,
 "unique": false,
 "user": "hackthesec"
}
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Now that the keys are in place lets try running an arbitrary command like hostname and hope we don't get prompted for a password 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m shell -a "hostname" -u root</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">127.0.0.1 | success | rc=0 >></pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Success!!! Now that we can run commands as root and not be bothered by using a password we are in a good place to easily configure any and all hosts in the ansible hosts file. Let's remove the key from /tmp: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m file -a "dest=/tmp/id_rsa.pub state=absent" -u root</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">127.0.0.1 | success >> {
 "changed": true,
 "path": "/tmp/id_rsa.pub",
 "state": "absent"
}</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Next, I'm going to make sure we have a few packages installed and on the latest version and we will move on to something a little more complicated: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible all -m zypper -a "name=apache2 state=latest" -u root</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;">127.0.0.1 | success >> {
 "changed": false,
 "name": "apache2",
 "state": "latest"
}
</pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Alright, the key we placed in /tmp is now absent and we have the latest version of apache installed. This brings me to the next point, something that makes ansible very flexible and gives more power to playbooks, many may have noticed the -m zypper in the previous commands. Now unless you use openSuse or Suse enterpise you may not be familiar with zypper, it is basically the equivalent of yum in the suse world. In all of the examples above I have only had one machine in my hosts file, and while everything but the last command should work on any standard *nix systems with standard ssh configs, this leads to a problem. What if we had multiple machine types that we wanted to manage? Well this is where playbooks, and the configurability of ansible really shines. First lets modify our hosts file a little, here goes: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ cat ~/ansible_hosts</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
[RHELBased]
10.50.1.33
10.50.1.47
 
[SUSEBased]
127.0.0.1
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
First, we create some groups of servers, and give them some meaningful tags. Then we create a playbook that will do different things for the different kinds of servers. You might notice the similarity between the yaml data structures and the command line instructions we ran earlier. Basically the -m is a module, and -a is for module args. In the YAML representation you put the module then :, and finally the args.</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
---
- hosts: SUSEBased
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - zypper: name=apache2 state=latest
- hosts: RHELBased
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - yum: name=httpd state=latest
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Now that we have a simple playbook, we can run it as follows: 
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">$ ansible-playbook testPlaybook.yaml -f 10</code> 
Sample outputs:</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
PLAY [SUSEBased] **************************************************************
 
GATHERING FACTS ***************************************************************
ok: [127.0.0.1]
 
TASK: [zypper name=apache2 state=latest] ************************************** 
ok: [127.0.0.1]
 
PLAY [RHELBased] **************************************************************
 
GATHERING FACTS ***************************************************************
ok: [10.50.1.33]
ok: [10.50.1.47]
 
TASK: [yum name=httpd state=latest] ******************************************* 
changed: [10.50.1.33]
changed: [10.50.1.47]
 
PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************
10.50.1.33 : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 
10.50.1.47 : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 
127.0.0.1 : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Now you will notice that you will see output from each machine that ansible contacted. The -f is what lets ansible run on multiple hosts in parallel. Instead of using all, or a name of a host group, on the command line you can put this passwords for the ask-pass prompt into the playbook. While we no longer need the --ask-pass since we have ssh keys setup, it comes in handy when setting up new machines, and even new machines can run from a playbook. To demonstrate this lets convert our earlier key example into a playbook:</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
---
- hosts: SUSEBased
 remote_user: hackthesec

sudo: yes
 tasks:
 - authorized_key: user=root key="{{ lookup('file', '/home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.pub') }}" path=/root/.ssh/authorized_keys manage_dir=no- hosts: RHELBased
 remote_user: mdonlon
 sudo: yes
 tasks:
 - authorized_key: user=root key="{{ lookup('file', '/home/hackthesec/.ssh/id_rsa.pub') }}" path=/root/.ssh/authorized_keys manage_dir=no </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Now there are plenty of other options here that could be done, for example having the keys dropped during a kickstart, or via some other kind of process involved with bringing up machines on the hosting of your choice, but this can be used in pretty much any situation assuming ssh is setup to accept a password. One thing to think about before writing out too many playbooks, version control can save you a lot of time. Machines need to change over time, you don't need to re-write a playbook every time a machine changes, just update the pertinent bits and commit the changes. Another benefit of this ties into what I said earlier about being able to manage the entire infrastructure from multiple places. You can easily git clone your playbook repo onto a new machine and be completely setup to manage everything in a repetitive manner.</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Real world ansible example</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
I know a lot of people make great use of services like pastebin, and a lot of companies for obvious reasons setup their own internal instance of something similar. Recently, I came across a newish application called showterm and coincidentally I was asked to setup an internal instance of it for a client. I will spare you the details of this app, but you can google showterm if interested. So for a reasonable real world example I will attempt to setup a showterm server, and configure the needed app on the client to use it. In the process we will need a database server as well. So here goes, lets start with the client configuration.</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
---
- hosts: showtermClients
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - yum: name=rubygems state=latest
 - yum: name=ruby-devel state=latest
 - yum: name=gcc state=latest
 - gem: name=showterm state=latest user_install=no
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
That was easy, lets move on to the main server:</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
---
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - name: ensure packages are installed
 yum: name={{item}} state=latest
 with_items:
 - postgresql
 - postgresql-server
 - postgresql-devel
 - python-psycopg2
 - git
 - ruby21
 - ruby21-passenger
 - name: showterm server from github
 git: repo=https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm.io dest=/root/showterm
 - name: Initdb
 command: service postgresql initdb
 creates=/var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf
 
 - name: Start PostgreSQL and enable at boot
 service: name=postgresql
 enabled=yes
 state=started
 - gem: name=pg state=latest user_install=no
 handlers:
 - name: restart postgresql
 service: name=postgresql state=restarted
 
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 sudo: yes
 sudo_user: postgres
 vars:
 dbname: showterm
 dbuser: showterm
 dbpassword: showtermpassword
 tasks:
 - name: create db
 postgresql_db: name={{dbname}}
 
 - name: create user with ALL priv
 postgresql_user: db={{dbname}} name={{dbuser}} password={{dbpassword}} priv=ALL
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - name: database.yml
 template: src=database.yml dest=/root/showterm/config/database.yml
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - name: run bundle install
 shell: bundle install
 args:
 chdir: /root/showterm
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - name: run rake db tasks
 shell: 'bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate db:seed'
 args:
 chdir: /root/showterm
- hosts: showtermServers
 remote_user: root
 tasks:
 - name: apache config
 template: src=showterm.conf dest=/etc/httpd/conf.d/showterm.conf
 
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Not so bad, now keeping in mind that this is a somewhat random and obscure app that we can now install in a consistent fashion on any number of machines, this is where the benefits of configuration management really come to light. Also, in most cases the declarative syntax almost speaks for itself and wiki pages need not go into as much detail, although a wiki page with too much detail is never a bad thing in my opinion.</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Expanding Configuration</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
We have not touched on everything here, Ansible has many options for configuring you setup. You can do things like embedding variables in your hosts file, so that Ansible will interpolate them on the remote nodes, eg.</div>
<pre class="ini" style="background-color: #fafbfc; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; overflow: auto; padding: 14px; tab-size: 4; word-wrap: normal;"> 
[RHELBased]
10.50.1.33 http_port=443
10.50.1.47 http_port=80 ansible_ssh_user=mdonlon
 
[SUSEBased]
127.0.0.1 http_port=443
 </pre>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
While this is really handy for quick configurations, you can also layer variables across multiple files in yaml format. In you hosts file path you can make two sub directories named group_vars and host_vars. Any files in those paths that match the name of the group of hosts, or a host name in your hosts file will be interpolated at run time. So the previous example would look like this:</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;"> ultrabook:/etc/ansible # pwd /etc/ansible ultrabook:/etc/ansible # tree . ├── group_vars │   ├── RHELBased │   └── SUSEBased ├── hosts └── host_vars ├── 10.50.1.33 └── 10.50.1.47</code></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">2 directories, 5 files ultrabook:/etc/ansible # cat hosts [RHELBased] 10.50.1.33 10.50.1.47</code></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<code style="background-color: #fafbfc; border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); clear: both; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, Courier, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 21px; word-wrap: normal;">[SUSEBased] 127.0.0.1 ultrabook:/etc/ansible # cat group_vars/RHELBased ultrabook:/etc/ansible # cat group_vars/SUSEBased --- http_port: 443 ultrabook:/etc/ansible # cat host_vars/10.50.1.33 --- http_port: 443 ultrabook:/etc/ansible # cat host_vars/10.50.1.47 --- http_port:80 ansible_ssh_user: mdonlon</code></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Refining Playbooks</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
There are many ways to organize playbooks as well. In the previous examples we used a single file, and everything is really simplified. One way of organizing things that is commonly used is creating roles. Basically you load a main file as your playbook, and that then imports all the data from the extra files, the extra files are organized as roles. For example if you have a wordpress site, you need a web head, and a database. The web head will have a web server, the app code, and any needed modules. The database is sometimes ran on the same host and some times ran on remote hosts, and this is where roles really shine. You make a directory, and small playbook for each role. In this case we can have an apache role, mysql role, wordpress role, mod_php, and php roles. The big advantage to this is that not every role has to be applied on one server, in this case mysql could be applied to a separate machine. This also allows for code re-use, for example you apache role could be used with python apps and php apps alike. Demonstrating this is a little beyond the scope of this article, and there are many different ways of doing thing, I would recommend searching for ansible playbook examples. There are many people contributing code on github, and I am sure various other sites.</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Modules</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
All of the work being done behind the scenes in ansible is driven by modules. Ansible has an excellent library of built in modules that do things like package installation, transferring files, and everything we have done in this article. But for some people this will not be suitable for their setup, ansible has a means of adding your own modules. One great thing about the API provided by Ansible is that you are not restricted to the language it was written in, Python, you can use any language really. Ansible modules work by passing around JSON data structures, so as long as you can build a JSON data structure in your language of choice, which I am pretty sure any scripting language can do, you can begin coding something right away. There is much documentation on the Ansible site, about how the module interface works, and many examples of modules on github as well. Keep in mind that some obscure languages may not have great support, but that would only be because not enough people are contributing code in that language, try it out and publish your results somewhere!</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 32px; margin: 41px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Conclusion</h2>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
In conclusion, there are many systems around for configuration management, I hope this article shows the ease of setup for ansible which I believe is one of its strongest points. Please keep in mind that I was trying to show a lot of different ways to do things, and not everything above may be considered best practice in your private infrastructure, or the coding world abroad. Here are some more links to take you knowledge of ansible to the next level:</div>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; list-style-type: square; margin: 0px 0px 27px 27px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><a href="http://www.ansible.com/" style="color: grey; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">Ansible project</a> home page.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><a href="http://docs.ansible.com/" style="color: grey; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Ansible project documentation</a>.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><a href="http://rosstuck.com/multistage-environments-with-ansible/" style="color: grey; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Multistage environments with Ansible</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>