mgr-ansible-ssh - Intelligent, Lightweight CLI for Distributed Remote Execution by deve5h

Description

By the end of Hack Week, the target will be to deliver a minimal functional version 1 (MVP) of a custom command-line tool named mgr-ansible-ssh (a unified wrapper for BOTH ad-hoc shell & playbooks) that allows operators to:

1. Execute arbitrary shell commands on thousand of remote machines simultaneously using Ansible Runner with artifacts saved locally.
2. Pass runtime options such as inventory file, remote command string/ playbook execution, parallel forks, limits, dry-run mode, or no-std-ansible-output.
3. Leverage existing SSH trust relationships without additional setup.
4. Provide a clean, intuitive CLI interface with --help for ease of use. It should provide consistent UX & CI-friendly interface.
5. Establish a foundation that can later be extended with advanced features such as logging, grouping, interactive shell mode, safe-command checks, and parallel execution tuning.

The MVP should enable day-to-day operations to efficiently target thousands of machines with a single, consistent interface.

Goals

Primary Goals (MVP):

Build a functional CLI tool (mgr-ansible-ssh) capable of executing shell commands on multiple remote hosts using Ansible Runner. Test the tool across a large distributed environment (1000+ machines) to validate its performance and reliability.

Looking forward to significantly reducing the zypper deployment time across all 351 RMT VM servers in our MLM cluster by eliminating the dependency on the taskomatic service, bringing execution down to a fraction of the current duration. The tool should also support multiple runtime flags, such as:

mgr-ansible-ssh: Remote command execution wrapper using Ansible Runner

Usage: mgr-ansible-ssh [--help] [--version] [--inventory INVENTORY]
                   [--run RUN] [--playbook PLAYBOOK] [--limit LIMIT]
                   [--forks FORKS] [--dry-run] [--no-ansible-output]

Required Arguments
--inventory, -i      Path to Ansible inventory file to use

Any One of the Arguments Is Required
--run, -r            Execute the specified shell command on target hosts
--playbook, -p       Execute the specified Ansible playbook on target hosts

Optional Arguments
--help, -h           Show the help message and exit
--version, -v        Show the version and exit
--limit, -l          Limit execution to specific hosts or groups
--forks, -f          Number of parallel Ansible forks
--dry-run            Run in Ansible check mode (requires -p or --playbook)
--no-ansible-output  Suppress Ansible stdout output

Secondary/Stretched Goals (if time permits):

1. Add pretty output formatting (success/failure summary per host).
2. Implement basic logging of executed commands and results.
3. Introduce safety checks for risky commands (shutdown, rm -rf, etc.).
4. Package the tool so it can be installed with pip or stored internally.

Resources

Collaboration is welcome from anyone interested in CLI tooling, automation, or distributed systems. Skills that would be particularly valuable include:

1. Python especially around CLI dev (argparse, click, rich)

Bring to Cockpit + System Roles capabilities from YAST by miguelpc

Bring to Cockpit + System Roles features from YAST

Cockpit and System Roles have been added to SLES 16 There are several capabilities in YAST that are not yet present in Cockpit and System Roles We will follow the principle of "automate first, UI later" being System Roles the automation component and Cockpit the UI one.

Goals

The idea is to implement service configuration in System Roles and then add an UI to manage these in Cockpit. For some capabilities it will be required to have an specific Cockpit Module as they will interact with a reasource already configured.

Resources

A plan on capabilities missing and suggested implementation is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZhX-Ip9MKJNeKSYV3bSZG4Qc5giuY7XSV0U61Ecu9lo/edit

Linux System Roles:

• https://linux-system-roles.github.io/
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/ansible-linux-system-roles Package on sle16 ansible-linux-system-roles

First meeting Hackweek catchup

• Monday, December 1 · 11:00 – 12:00
• Time zone: Europe/Madrid
• Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/rrc-kqch-hca