tendermint/ansible/README.md

# Ansible playbook for Tendermint

![Ansible plus Tendermint](img/a_plus_t.png)

* [Prerequisites](#Prerequisites)
* [Ansible setup](#Ansible setup)
* [Running the playbook](#Running the playbook)
* [Example playbook that configures a Tendermint on Ubuntu](#example-playbook-that-configures-a-tendermint-on-ubuntu)

The playbooks in this folder run [ansible](http://www.ansible.com/) roles which:

* install and configure tendermint
* install and configure  basecoin
* start/stop tendermint and basecoin

## Prerequisites

* Ansible 2.0 or higher
* SSH key to the servers

Optional for DigitalOcean droplets:
* DigitalOcean API Token
* python dopy package

Head over to the [Terraform folder](https://github.com/tendermint/tools) for a description on how to get a DigitalOcean API Token.

Optional for Amazon AWS instances:
* Amazon AWS API access key ID and secret access key.

The cloud inventory scripts come from the ansible team at https://github.com/ansible/ansible. You can get the latest version from the contrib/inventory folder.

## Ansible setup

Ansible requires a "command machine" or "local machine" or "orchestrator machine" to run on. This can be your laptop or any machine that runs linux. (It does not have to be part of the cloud network that hosts your servers.)

Note: The below commands use the Ubuntu/Debian `apt-get` command. To make it compatible with RedHat/CentOS, replace it with `yum`.

```
sudo apt-get install ansible
```

To make life easier, you can start an SSH Agent and load your SSH key(s). This way ansible will have an uninterrupted way of connecting to tour servers.

```
ssh-agent > ~/.ssh/ssh.env
source ~/.ssh/ssh.env

ssh-add private.key
```

Subsequently, as long as the agent is running, you can use `source ~/.ssh/ssh.env` to load the keys to the current session.

### Optional cloud dependencies

If you are using a cloud provider to host your servers, you need the below dependencies installed on your local machine.

DigitalOcean inventory dependencies:
```
sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo pip install dopy
```

Amazon AWS inventory dependencies:
```
sudo apt-get install python-boto
```

## Refreshing the DigitalOcean inventory

If you just finished creating droplets, the local DigitalOcean inventory cache is not up-to-date. To refresh it, run:

```
DO_API_TOKEN="<The API token received from DigitalOcean>"
python -u inventory/digital_ocean.py --refresh-cache 1> /dev/null
```

## Refreshing the Amazon AWS inventory

If you just finished creating Amazon AWS EC2 instances, the local AWS inventory cache is not up-to-date. To refresh it, run:

```
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='<The API access key ID received from Amazon>'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='<The API secret access key received from Amazon>'
python -u inventory/ec2.py --refresh-cache 1> /dev/null
```

Note you don't need the access key and secret key set, if you are running ansible on an Amazon AMI instance with the proper IAM permissions set.

## Running the playbook

The playbook is locked down to only run if the environment variable `TF_VAR_TESTNET_NAME` is populated. This is a precaution so you don't accidentally run the playbook on all your servers.

The variable `TF_VAR_TESTNET_NAME` contains the testnet name which ansible translates into an ansible group. If you used Terraform to create the servers, it was the testnet name used there.

If the playbook cannot connect to the servers because of public key denial, your SSH Agent is not set up properly. Alternatively you can add the SSH key to ansible using the `--private-key` option.

### DigitalOcean
```
DO_API_TOKEN="<The API token received from DigitalOcean>"
TF_VAR_TESTNET_NAME="testnet-servers"
ansible-playbook -i inventory/digital_ocean.py install.yml
```

### Amazon AWS
```
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='<The API access key ID received from Amazon>'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='<The API secret access key received from Amazon>'
TF_VAR_TESTNET_NAME="testnet-servers"
ansible-playbook -i inventory/ec2.py install.yml
```

### Installing custom versions

By default ansible installs the tendermint and basecoin binary versions defined in its [default variables](#Default variables). If you built your own version of the binaries, you can tell ansible to install that instead.

```
GOPATH="<your go path>"
go get -u github.com/tendermint/tendermint/cmd/tendermint
go get -u github.com/tendermint/basecoin/cmd/basecoin

DO_API_TOKEN="<The API token received from DigitalOcean>"
TF_VAR_TESTNET_NAME="testnet-servers"
ansible-playbook -i inventory/digital_ocean.py install.yml -e tendermint_release_install=false -e basecoin_release_install=false
```

## Starting the servers 

To be continued...

## Default variables


To be continued...