mash-playbook/docs/prerequisites.md

Prerequisites

To install services using this Ansible playbook, you need:

• (Recommended) An x86-64 (amd64) or arm64 server running one of these operating systems:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux or derivative distros, e.g. Rocky Linux (Major version 7 or newer)
  • Debian (10/Buster or newer)
  • Ubuntu (18.04 or newer, although 20.04 may be problematic)
  • Archlinux

Generally, newer is better. We only strive to support released stable versions of distributions, not betas or pre-releases. This playbook can take over your whole server or co-exist with other services that you have there.

This playbook somewhat supports running on non-amd64 architectures like ARM. See Alternative Architectures.

If your distro runs within an LXC container, you may hit this issue. It can be worked around, if absolutely necessary, but we suggest that you avoid running from within an LXC container.

• root access to your server (or a user capable of elevating to root via sudo).

• Python being installed on the server. Most distributions install Python by default, but some don't (e.g. Ubuntu 18.04) and require manual installation (something like apt-get install python3). On some distros, Ansible may incorrectly detect the Python version (2 vs 3) and you may need to explicitly specify the interpreter path in inventory/hosts during installation (e.g. ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3)

• sudo being installed on the server, even when you've configured Ansible to log in as root. Some distributions, like a minimal Debian net install, do not include the sudo package by default.

• The Ansible program being installed on your own computer. It's used to run this playbook and configures your server for you. Take a look at our guide about Ansible for more information, as well as version requirements and alternative ways to run Ansible.

• the passlib Python library installed on the computer you run Ansible. On most distros, you need to install some python-passlib or py3-passlib package, etc.

• git is the recommended way to download the playbook to your computer. git may also be required on the server if you will be self-building components.

• just for running just roles and playbook installation commands, etc. (see justfile). You can get by without just (by running ansible-galaxy, ansible-playbook commands manually), but maintaining your playbook setup will require more manual work. just (thanks to the commands defined in the justfile) keeps various files (setup.yml, requirements.yml, group_vars/mash_servers) up-to-date with the templates in the templates/ directory automatically.

• at least one domain name you can use

• Some TCP/UDP ports open. This playbook (actually Docker itself) configures the server's internal firewall for you. In most cases, you don't need to do anything special. But if your server is running behind another firewall, you'd need to open these ports:

  • 80/tcp: HTTP webserver
  • 443/tcp: HTTPS webserver
  • potentially some other ports, depending on the services that you enable in the configuring the playbook step (later on). Consult each service's documentation page in docs/ for that.

When ready to proceed, continue with Configuring DNS.