Rolling Update Debian-like systems - Ansible module apt

"Maintaining in a consistent state your fleet of machines is one of the most time-consuming tasks of the System Administrator.

How to perform Rolling Update with Ansible in Debian-like systems?

I'm going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code.

I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of

Ansible Pilot

Ansible Rolling Update packages in Debian-like systems

Today we're talking about rolling updates on Debian-like systems using Ansible module apt.

We already talked about this module for installing packages but we would like to consider another use case.

This module allows you to manage packages with the apt package manager.

Parameters

name _string_

state _string_

update_cache _boolean_

upgrade _no/safe/full/dist_

The parameter list is pretty wide but today we are focus on these four options for our use case.

The "name" parameter could be a package or we could select all the packages of the system with the "\*" star symbol.

The state for this case needs to be "latest" so we target the latest version for every package.

The "update_cache" is useful to forces the update of repository metadata before the installation.

Another useful option is "upgrade" with four alternatives:

default is a no,

if safe, performs an aptitude safe-upgrade,

if full, performs an aptitude full-upgrade,

if dist performs an apt-get dist-upgrade.

Demo

Let's jump in a real-life Playbook of Rolling Update on Debian-like systems with Ansible Playbook.

apt-nginx.yml

``yaml


---
name: rolling update Playbook
  hosts: all
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: ensure pkg updated
      ansible.builtin.apt:
        name: nginx
        state: latest
        update_cache: true



apt-system.yml

`yaml


---
name: rolling update Playbook
  hosts: all
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: ensure system updated
      ansible.builtin.apt:
        name: "*"
        state: latest
        update_cache: true

[code with ❤️ in GitHub](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/tree/master/rolling%20update%20Debian-like%20systems)

Conclusion

Now you know better how to troubleshoot the most common Ansible error about privilege escalation.