The Salt is good, but it has a limitations. Here comes the Ansible which handles stuff that Salt can’t (i.e. the Salt can’t handle some states of the VM and can’t wait until qube’s shuts down). But I didn’t figure out how to interact with templates using Ansible. There is no information about templates in documentation.
I want to install templates using ansible or install some non-free software into one. Or there is a way to combine salt and ansible?
Hi @EnDelta,
that looks like two different tasks.
The one is creating/cloning a template, the available docu has nothing about it.
The second is the installation of software, for that task, you can handle any template like a VM. The docu has for the installation of software some examples.
The Ansible docu has something about the apt and the dnf modules, what can be used to install software in templates:
https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/dnf_module.html
https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/apt_module.html
You can salt any features or preferences of qubes using either the
qubes modules or direct calls to the qubes tools.
I’m not clear what you mean by “can’t wait until qube’s shuts down”, but
if you want to ensure that a qube is shut down, then you can use the
usual salt ordering mechanisms, and use is-halted in a prerequisite
state.
As for ansible, you interact with template and other qubes in the same
way, by target in the playbook.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
[… 10 lines elided] I didn’t figure out how to interact with
templates using Ansible. There is no information about templates in
documentation.I want to install templates using ansible or install some non-free
software into one.
[… 9 lines elided]
Is there a beginner-friendly Ansible for QubesOS 4.3 tutorial, in the
form of a blog post, somewhere?
I would like to learn using Ansible; doing sudo apt install and trying
to track which packages I install to my debian templates is getting
tiring (not to mention trying to track the packages you install is
generally inaccurate when done manually).
Ansible sounds like it can give me a “reproducible” debian package
installs, as I update from debian-13 to debian-14, going forward.