Linode support has been in Ansible for a few years. The linode module offers many of the Instance management features of the Legacy Linode API (v3).

In the most recent release of Ansible 2.8, Linode support has been updated for use with the latest Linode API (v4). Most of this work was contributed by by Luke Murphy who started the process and saw it through to the Ansible release. He's also continuing this "Linode all the things" effort on the Molecule project.

To contribute more to this project, join the Ansible Linode Working Group.

See the docs for the Linode Inventory and linode_v4 module:

• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/plugins/inventory/linode.html
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/linode_v4_module.html

Here's an example yaml file and the instructions to execute it. This example will create a Linode Nanode and will install Minecraft server on it:

1. Create a mc.yml file using the snippet below
2. pip install --upgrade ansible
3. Get a Linode Personal Access Token with permission to read and write Linodes.
4. export LINODE_TOKEN=... # Replace ... with the token
5. ansible-playbook mc.yml -e linode_token=$LINODE_TOKEN -e type=g6-nanode-1 -e region=us-east -e image=linode/debian9 -e ssh_key=~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

---
- name: launch Linode instance
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: False
  tasks:
    - name: pwd
      local_action: command pwd
    - name: spin up Linode instance
      local_action:
        module: linode_v4
          state=present
          label=minecraft1
          access_token={{linode_token}}
          authorized_keys={{ssh_key}}
          type={{type}}
          region={{region}}
          image={{image}}
      register: my_linode
    - name: print info about my_linode
      local_action:
        module: debug
          msg="ID is {{ my_linode.instance.id }} IP is {{ my_linode.instance.ipv4 }}"
    - name: Add new linode to host group
      local_action:
        module: add_host
          hostname={{ my_linode.instance.ipv4[0] }}
          group=launched
          ansible_user=root
    - name: Wait for SSH to come up
      local_action:
        module: wait_for
          host={{ my_linode.instance.ipv4[0] }}
          port=22
          search_regex=OpenSSH
          timeout=320
- name: Configure linode for minecraft
  hosts: launched
  gather_facts: True
  tasks:
    - name: apply apt-get update --fix-missing
      apt:
        update_cache: yes
        autoclean: yes
        autoremove: yes
        upgrade: dist
    - name: install Java and Screen
      apt:
        update_cache: yes
        autoclean: yes
        autoremove: yes
        name: "{{ packages }}"
      vars:
        packages:
        - default-jdk
        - screen
    - name: make the minecraft directory
      file: state=directory path=/root/minecraft
    - name: download minecraft (1.6.4)
      command: wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/1.6.4/minecraft_server.1.6.4.jar chdir=/root/minecraft creates=/root/minecraft/minecraft_server.1.6.4.jar
      become_user: root
      become_method: sudo
    - name: run minecraft
      command: screen -S minecraft -d -m java -Xmx512M -Xms512M -jar /root/minecraft/minecraft_server.1.6.4.jar
      become_user: root
      become_method: sudo

It would be great to see an example where I can spin up two or three hosts and a node balancer as well.

I'm trying to do something like this:

---

Playbook for creating linodes and populating them.

• name: Create group of linodes
  hosts: localhost
  vars_files:

• ./vars/vars.yml

• ./vars/external.yml

  tasks:

• include_tasks: create.yml
  with_items:

  • web-p01
  • web-p02
    loop_control:
    loop_var: linode

And my tasks look very much like your mc.yml above, which has been a big help. Now to get it working in a loop properly
But it creates the first linode and them bombs when trying to use the 'package' module to apply patches, since I'm using CentOS8, not Debian as my install image.

I like Ansible… but I also find it annoying. LOL.

Ok, so I think I've figured it out, and my mistakes all come down to indentation. The section where you have "configure linode for minecraft" needed to be all the way left in my main task file when I called it. It's now working great.

I'll post a simple exmaple at some point I hope.