📜Automate Script Deployment and Scheduling with Ansible

#devops #ansible #automation #linux

In the world of DevOps, automation is not just a convenience—it's a superpower. And when it comes to configuring remote systems at scale, Ansible continues to shine as one of the most elegant and efficient tools in the toolbox.

In this article, we’ll walk through an Ansible playbook designed to automate two crucial tasks:

Deploying a shell script to remote servers, and
Scheduling it with crontab so it runs at regular intervals.

📜 Anatomy of the Playbook

Here's the heart of the automation:

- name: Deploy Script and Make a Crontab Entry
  hosts: all
  become: true
  gather_facts: false

We begin by defining a playbook that runs on all hosts, with become: true to elevate privileges when needed. No facts gathering means faster execution, since we're dealing with static tasks.

🔧 Variables Section

vars:
  - SCRIPT_NAME: <script-name>
  - SCRIPT_SRC: ./
  - SCRIPT_DEST: <destination-path-on-remote-server>
  - SCRIPT_USER_OWNER: "centos"
  - SCRIPT_GROUP_OWNER: "centos"

  - DEPLOY_FOR_USER: "centos"
  - MINUTE: "*/10"
  - HOUR: "*"
  - DAY: "*"
  - MONTH: "*"
  - WEEKDAY: "*"

These variables give you full control over where and how your script is deployed, and at what schedule it should run. Want it every hour? Change MINUTE: 0. Different user? Change DEPLOY_FOR_USER, SCRIPT_USER_OWNER, SCRIPT_GROUP_OWNER.

📂 Task 1: Ensure the Directory Exists

- name: "Create the directory if it does not exist"
  ansible.builtin.file:
    path: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}"
    state: directory
    mode: '0755'

Simple and effective—if the target directory isn't there, it's created.

📄 Task 2: Copy the Script

- name: "Place Script at the desired path"
  ansible.builtin.copy:
    src: "{{ SCRIPT_SRC }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
    dest: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
    owner: "{{ SCRIPT_USER_OWNER }}"
    group: "{{ SCRIPT_GROUP_OWNER }}"
    mode: '0755'

This copies the script from your local directory (SCRIPT_SRC) to the destination on the remote server (SCRIPT_DEST) with proper permissions and ownership.

⏰ Task 3: Add a Crontab Entry

- name: "make crontab entry for the script"
  ansible.builtin.cron:
    name: "Test Script deployed by Ansible"
    job: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
    user: "{{ DEPLOY_FOR_USER }}"
    minute: "{{ MINUTE }}"
    hour: "{{ HOUR }}"
    day: "{{ DAY }}"
    month: "{{ MONTH }}"
    weekday: "{{ WEEKDAY }}"

This is where the magic happens. A cron job is created (or updated if it already exists) to schedule the script’s execution. With the default values, it will run every 10 minutes.

📦 Complete Playbook

# Deploy Bash Script with Ansible

- name: Deploy Script and Make a Crontab Entry
  hosts: all
  become: true
  gather_facts: false

  # update these variable as per the need
  vars:

    # script details
  - SCRIPT_NAME: <script-name>
  - SCRIPT_SRC: ./
  - SCRIPT_DEST: <destination-path-on-remote-server>
  - SCRIPT_USER_OWNER: "centos"
  - SCRIPT_GROUP_OWNER: "centos"

    # crontab details
  - DEPLOY_FOR_USER: "centos"
  - MINUTE: "*/10"
  - HOUR: "*"
  - DAY: "*"
  - MONTH: "*"
  - WEEKDAY: "*"

  tasks:

  # create operations script directory if it doesn't exist already
  - name: "Create the directory if it does not exist"
    ansible.builtin.file:
      path: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}"
      state: directory
      mode: '0755'

  # copy the script on the host
  - name: "Place Script at the desired path"
    ansible.builtin.copy:
      src: "{{ SCRIPT_SRC }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
      dest: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
      owner: "{{ SCRIPT_USER_OWNER }}"
      group: "{{ SCRIPT_GROUP_OWNER }}"
      mode: '0755'

  # edit the crontab
  - name: "make crontab entry for the script"
    ansible.builtin.cron:
      name: "Test Script deployed by Ansible"
      job: "{{ SCRIPT_DEST }}/{{ SCRIPT_NAME }}"
      user: "{{ DEPLOY_FOR_USER }}"
      minute: "{{ MINUTE }}"
      hour: "{{ HOUR }}"
      day: "{{ DAY }}"
      month: "{{ MONTH }}"
      weekday: "{{ WEEKDAY }}"

How to Use This Playbook

Save the playbook as deploy_script.yml
Place your shell script in the same directory
Customize variables if needed (script name, user, schedule)
Run the playbook:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini deploy_script.yml

Make sure your inventory.ini file lists the remote hosts you want to target.

🎯 Why Use This?

This approach is:

Repeatable: Run it anytime to redeploy or update the cron schedule.
Scalable: Works across any number of hosts defined in your inventory.
Idempotent: Ansible ensures tasks are only applied when necessary.

Whether you’re deploying monitoring scripts, maintenance tasks, or log rotators, this playbook gives you a clean and automated pathway.

This article builds upon our previous post on Setting up a local Ansible lab with Vagrant, where we prepared the perfect sandbox to try out playbooks like this.

{
    "author"   :  "Kartik Dudeja",
    "email"    :  "[email protected]",
    "linkedin" :  "https://linkedin.com/in/kartik-dudeja",
    "github"   :  "https://github.com/Kartikdudeja"
}