Preparing the Installation Workstation (Ansible Controller)

The Ansible Installation host or Ansible Controller is the host running the Ansible playbook to install the Lightbits cluster.

We support two ways to set up the Ansible Controller:

• Ansible and its dependencies are installed on the Ansible Controller.
• Using a prebuilt Ansible Docker image.

Choose one of the methods and follow the steps - for either the Ansible or Docker method.

Ansible Method

For the Ansible method, follow these instructions to install the dependencies.

Installing Ansible and Dependencies

The following tools are required to complete the Lightbits cluster software installation:

• sshpass or ssh-key authentication
• Python v3.13 or higher
• Python Modules: ansible, netaddr, pyjwt, six

If you have validated the networking environment as described in the previous section, log in to your installation workstation and begin downloading and installing the required tools on your workstation.

Installing sshpass or Use ssh-key Authentication

The Python tool is essential for running commands remotely on each of the servers used in the cluster. To run these commands, you must install a Secure Shell (SSH) authentication software package. There are two ways to install this package.

• Use the Linux sshpass utility.

To install “sshpass”, enter the following command at the CLI:

$ yum install -y sshpass

• Use ssh-key authentication.

To use ssh-key authentication, see Using SSH-Key Authentication.

• Package required for Multi-Tenancy $ yum install -y libselinux-python3

Installing Other Dependencies

Install the remaining packages to meet the dependencies for Ansible. Some of these might already be present on the system.

yum install -y gcc libffi-devel openssl-devel git openssh curl bash openssl sudo

Installing the Required Python Version

The Ansible installer is a module installed with Python. Lightbits recommends that you have Python v3.10 or above installed on your system.

If Linux reports that Python 3.x is not installed, make sure to have Python 3.13 and pip3.13 installed.

Installing Ansible Module Using PyPI

Check if Ansible is installed, as well as its version. For example:

ansible --version

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Command 'ansible' not found

If not found, you can also install Ansible using the latest python's pip (pip3.13 in this case). Note that this should be run as a non-root user.

pip3.13 install ansible==9.13.0

Verify that Ansible is installed, as well as its version, by entering:

ansible --version

ansible [core 2.16.14]

  config file = None

  configured module search path = ['/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']

  ansible python module location = /usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/ansible

  ansible collection location = /root/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections

  executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible

  python version = 3.13.1 (main, Dec  9 2024, 20:39:36) [GCC 14.2.0] (/usr/local/bin/python3.13)

  jinja version = 3.1.5

  libyaml = True

Installing Additional Python Modules

The Python netaddr module and python_jwt are also required.

These modules are used to manipulate network addresses, and generate JWT tokens as part of the installation.

At your workstation CLI, enter:

pip3.13 install netaddr pyjwt six

Installing Ansible Collections

Install the necessary Ansible collections. If the collections are already installed, proceed to the next step.

ansible-galaxy collection install --no-cache community.grafana community.crypto ansible.posix

Docker Method

Rather than installing and preparing Ansible and its dependencies, we also provide a custom Ansible image to deploy the Lightbits cluster image that contains all dependencies.

Using a Prebuilt Ansible Docker Image

The only prerequisites to use this image are:

• Having Docker installed.
• Access to Lightbits public registry or a private registry to fetch the lb-ansible image.
• This method requires a Docker login. Log in using the steps below and the credentials provided in the Lightbits Installation Customer Addendum.

docker login docker.lightbitslabs.com

Username: lightos-3-(Minor Ver)-(Rev)-rhl-(8/9)

Password: <YOUR_TOKEN>