Galaxy User Guide

Ansible Galaxy refers to the Galaxy website, a free site for finding, downloading, and sharing community developed collections and roles.

Use Galaxy to jump-start your automation project with great content from the Ansible community. Galaxy provides pre-packaged units of work such as roles, and collections. The collection format provides a comprehensive package of automation that may include multiple playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. See the Galaxy documentation for full details on Galaxy.

Finding collections on Galaxy 

To find collections on Galaxy:

Click Collections > Collections in the left-hand navigation.
Type in your search term. You can filter by keyword, tags, and namespaces.

Galaxy presents a list of collections that match your search criteria.

See Using Ansible collections for complete details on installing and using collections.

Finding roles on Galaxy 

To find standalone roles (that is roles that are not part of a collection):

Click Roles > Roles in the left-hand navigation.
Type in your search term. You can filter by keyword, tags, and namespaces.

Galaxy presents a list of roles that match your search criteria.

You can optionally search the Galaxy database by tags, platforms, author and multiple keywords using the ansible-galaxy CLI command.

$ ansible-galaxy role search elasticsearch --author geerlingguy

The search command will return a list of the first 1000 results matching your search:

Found 6 roles matching your search:

 Name                             Description
 ----                             -----------
geerlingguy.elasticsearch         Elasticsearch for Linux.
geerlingguy.elasticsearch-curator Elasticsearch curator for Linux.
geerlingguy.filebeat              Filebeat for Linux.
geerlingguy.fluentd               Fluentd for Linux.
geerlingguy.kibana                Kibana for Linux.

Get more information about a role 

Use the info command to view more detail about a specific role:

$ ansible-galaxy role info username.role_name

This returns everything found in Galaxy for the role:

Role: username.role_name
    description: Installs and configures a thing, a distributed, highly available NoSQL thing.
    active: True
    commit: c01947b7bc89ebc0b8a2e298b87ab416aed9dd57
    commit_message: Adding travis
    commit_url: https://github.com/username/repo_name/commit/c01947b7bc89ebc0b8a2e298b87ab
    company: My Company, Inc.
    created: 2015-12-08T14:17:52.773Z
    download_count: 1
    forks_count: 0
    github_branch: main
    github_repo: repo_name
    github_user: username
    id: 6381
    is_valid: True
    issue_tracker_url:
    license: Apache
    min_ansible_version: 2.15
    modified: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.000Z
    namespace: username
    open_issues_count: 0
    path: /Users/username/projects/roles
    role_type: ANS
    stargazers_count: 0
    travis_status_url: https://travis-ci.org/username/repo_name.svg?branch=main

Installing roles from Galaxy 

The ansible-galaxy command comes bundled with Ansible, and you can use it to install roles from Galaxy or directly from a Git based SCM. You can also use it to create a new role, remove roles, or perform tasks on the Galaxy website.

The command line tool by default communicates with the Galaxy website API using the server address https://galaxy.ansible.com. If you run your own internal Galaxy server and want to use it instead of the default one, pass the --server option followed by the address of this galaxy server. You can set this option permanently by setting the Galaxy server value in your ansible.cfg file. See GALAXY_SERVER for details on setting the value in ansible.cfg .

Installing roles 

Use the ansible-galaxy command to download roles from the Galaxy website

$ ansible-galaxy role install namespace.role_name

Setting where to install roles

By default, Ansible downloads roles to the first writable directory in the default list of paths ~/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles. This installs roles in the home directory of the user running ansible-galaxy.

You can override this with one of the following options:

Set the environment variable ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH in your session.
Use the --roles-path option for the ansible-galaxy command.
Define roles_path in an ansible.cfg file.

The following provides an example of using --roles-path to install the role into the current working directory:

$ ansible-galaxy role install --roles-path . geerlingguy.apache

Installing a specific version of a role 

When the Galaxy server imports a role, it imports any Git tags matching the Semantic Version format as versions. In turn, you can download a specific version of a role by specifying one of the imported tags.

To see the available versions for a role:

Locate the role on the Galaxy search page.
Click on the name to view more details, including the available versions.

To install a specific version of a role from Galaxy, append a comma and the value of a GitHub release tag. For example:

$ ansible-galaxy role install geerlingguy.apache,3.2.0

It is also possible to point directly to the Git repository and specify a branch name or commit hash as the version. For example, the following will install a specific commit:

$ ansible-galaxy role install git+https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-apache.git,0b7cd353c0250e87a26e0499e59e7fd265cc2f25

Installing multiple roles from a file 

You can install multiple roles by including the roles in a requirements.yml file. The format of the file is YAML, and the file extension must be either .yml or .yaml.

Use the following command to install roles included in requirements.yml:

$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Again, the extension is important. If the .yml extension is left off, the ansible-galaxy CLI assumes the file is in an older, now deprecated, “basic” format.

Each role in the file will have one or more of the following attributes:

src
The source of the role. Use the format namespace.role_name, if downloading from Galaxy; otherwise, provide a URL pointing to a repository within a Git based SCM. See the examples below. This is a required attribute.

scm
Specify the SCM. As of this writing only git or hg are allowed. See the examples below. Defaults to git.

version:
The version of the role to download. Provide a release tag value, commit hash, or branch name. Defaults to the branch set as a default in the repository, otherwise defaults to the master.

name:
Download the role to a specific name. Defaults to the Galaxy name when downloading from Galaxy, otherwise it defaults to the name of the repository.

Use the following example as a guide for specifying roles in requirements.yml:

# from galaxy
- name: yatesr.timezone

# from locally cloned Git repository (git+file:// requires full paths)
- src: git+file:///home/bennojoy/nginx

# from GitHub
- src: https://github.com/bennojoy/nginx

# from GitHub, overriding the name and specifying a specific tag
- name: nginx_role
  src: https://github.com/bennojoy/nginx
  version: main

# from GitHub, specifying a specific commit hash
- src: https://github.com/bennojoy/nginx
  version: "ee8aa41"

# from a webserver, where the role is packaged in a tar.gz
- name: http-role-gz
  src: https://some.webserver.example.com/files/main.tar.gz

# from a webserver, where the role is packaged in a tar.bz2
- name: http-role-bz2
  src: https://some.webserver.example.com/files/main.tar.bz2

# from a webserver, where the role is packaged in a tar.xz (Python 3.x only)
- name: http-role-xz
  src: https://some.webserver.example.com/files/main.tar.xz

# from Bitbucket
- src: git+https://bitbucket.org/willthames/git-ansible-galaxy
  version: v1.4

# from Bitbucket, alternative syntax and caveats
- src: https://bitbucket.org/willthames/hg-ansible-galaxy
  scm: hg

# from GitLab or other git-based scm, using git+ssh
- src: [email protected]:mygroup/ansible-core.git
  scm: git
  version: "0.1"  # quoted, so YAML doesn't parse this as a floating-point value

Warning

Embedding credentials into a SCM URL is not secure. Make sure to use safe auth options for security reasons. For example, use SSH, netrc or http.extraHeader/url.<base>.pushInsteadOf in Git config to prevent your credentials from being exposed in logs.

Installing roles and collections from the same requirements.yml file 

You can install roles and collections from the same requirements files

---
roles:
  # Install a role from Ansible Galaxy.
  - name: geerlingguy.java
    version: "1.9.6" # note that ranges are not supported for roles

collections:
  # Install a collection from Ansible Galaxy.
  - name: community.general
    version: ">=7.0.0"
    source: https://galaxy.ansible.com

Installing multiple roles from multiple files 

For large projects, the include directive in a requirements.yml file provides the ability to split a large file into multiple smaller files.

For example, a project may have a requirements.yml file, and a webserver.yml file.

Below are the contents of the webserver.yml file:

# from github
- src: https://github.com/bennojoy/nginx

# from Bitbucket
- src: git+https://bitbucket.org/willthames/git-ansible-galaxy
  version: v1.4

The following shows the contents of the requirements.yml file that now includes the webserver.yml file:

# from galaxy
- name: yatesr.timezone
- include: <path_to_requirements>/webserver.yml

To install all the roles from both files, pass the root file, in this case requirements.yml on the command line, as follows:

$ ansible-galaxy role install -r requirements.yml

Dependencies 

Roles can also be dependent on other roles, and when you install a role that has dependencies, those dependencies will automatically be installed to the roles_path.

There are two ways to define the dependencies of a role:

using meta/requirements.yml
using meta/main.yml

Using `meta/requirements.yml`

New in version 2.10.

You can create the file meta/requirements.yml and define dependencies in the same format used for requirements.yml described in the Installing multiple roles from a file section.

From there, you can import or include the specified roles in your tasks.

Using `meta/main.yml`

Alternatively, you can specify role dependencies in the meta/main.yml file by providing a list of roles under the dependencies section. If the source of a role is Galaxy, you can simply specify the role in the format namespace.role_name. You can also use the more complex format in requirements.yml, allowing you to provide src, scm, version, and name.

Dependencies installed that way, depending on other factors described below, will also be executed before this role is executed during play execution. To better understand how dependencies are handled during play execution, see Roles.

The following shows an example meta/main.yml file with dependent roles:

---
dependencies:
  - geerlingguy.java

galaxy_info:
  author: geerlingguy
  description: Elasticsearch for Linux.
  company: "Midwestern Mac, LLC"
  license: "license (BSD, MIT)"
  min_ansible_version: 2.4
  galaxy_tags:
    - web
    - system
    - monitoring
    - logging
    - lucene
    - elk
    - elasticsearch

Tags are inherited down the dependency chain. In order for tags to be applied to a role and all its dependencies, the tag should be applied to the role, not to all the tasks within a role.

Roles listed as dependencies are subject to conditionals and tag filtering, and may not execute fully depending on what tags and conditionals are applied.

If the source of a role is Galaxy, specify the role in the format namespace.role_name:

dependencies:
  - geerlingguy.apache
  - geerlingguy.ansible

Alternately, you can specify the role dependencies in the complex form used in requirements.yml as follows:

dependencies:
  - name: geerlingguy.ansible
  - name: composer
    src: git+https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-composer.git
    version: 775396299f2da1f519f0d8885022ca2d6ee80ee8

Note

Galaxy expects all role dependencies to exist in Galaxy, and therefore dependencies to be specified in the namespace.role_name format. If you import a role with a dependency where the src value is a URL, the import process will fail.

List installed roles 

Use list to show the name and version of each role installed in the roles_path.

$ ansible-galaxy role list
  - namespace-1.foo, v2.7.2
  - namespace2.bar, v2.6.2

Remove an installed role 

Use remove to delete a role from roles_path:

$ ansible-galaxy role remove namespace.role_name

Galaxy User Guide

Setting where to install roles

Using meta/requirements.yml

Using meta/main.yml

Using `meta/requirements.yml`

Using `meta/main.yml`