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Athreya aka Maneshwar
Athreya aka Maneshwar

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Automating Ghost CMS + MariaDB with Ansible (the Smart Way)

#webdev #programming #beginners #devops

Hi there! I'm Maneshwar. Right now, I’m building LiveAPI, a first-of-its-kind tool that helps you automatically index API endpoints across all your repositories. LiveAPI makes it easier to discover, understand, and interact with APIs in large infrastructures.

Spinning up a Ghost blog manually is cool until you have to do it three times in a row.

Whether you're scaling, rebuilding, or just love your infra reproducible, Ansible + Ghost is a match made in automation heaven.

In this post, I’ll walk you through setting up Ghost CMS 5.x on Ubuntu 22.04 using Ansible with:

  • MariaDB 10.6 as the database
  • Full systemd-based process setup
  • Ghost CLI installation
  • Email SMTP config
  • Sane default user permissions
  • And yes — restoring Ghost from a backup

Project Layout

We scaffold our Ansible role using Galaxy:

ansible-galaxy init roles/ghost --offline
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Here's what the final structure looks like:

hex-ansible
├─ ghost.yml
├─ hosts.ini
├─ roles
│  └─ ghost/
│     ├─ tasks/
│     ├─ templates/
│     ├─ vars/
│     ├─ files/
│     └─ ...
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Variables: vars/main.yml

All our configurable values in one place:

ghost_user: ghost
node_major: 18
ghost_version: "5.89.3"
cli_version: 1.27.0
ghost_dir: /var/www/ghost
ghost_url: https://journal.hexmos.com

db_user: ghostuser
db_pass: ghostpass123
db_name: ghostdb
db_host: 127.0.0.1

restore_url: https://backup-bucket.example.com/ghost.zip

mail_transport: "SMTP"
mail_from: "'Ghost Journal' [email protected]"
mail_host: "smtp.example.com"
mail_port: 2465
mail_secure: true
mail_user: "SMTP_USER"
mail_pass: "SMTP_PASS"
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Task Breakdown

1. Install MariaDB (install_mariadb.yml)

This handles:

  • Repo + GPG key
  • Installing MariaDB 10.6
  • Creating the DB and user 
- name: Install MariaDB 10.6
  apt:
    name: mariadb-server
    state: present

- name: Create DB and user
  shell: |
    mysql -u root <<EOF
    CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS {{ db_name }};
    CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS '{{ db_user }}'@'{{ db_host }}' IDENTIFIED BY '{{ db_pass }}';
    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON {{ db_name }}.* TO '{{ db_user }}'@'{{ db_host }}';
    FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
    EOF
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2. Install Ghost & Node.js (install_ghost.yml)

Key steps:

  • Add NodeSource repo
  • Install Ghost CLI globally
  • Allow passwordless sudo for systemd ops
  • Install Ghost using the CLI as the ghost user 
- name: Install Ghost as ghost user
  become_user: "{{ ghost_user }}"
  shell: |
    cd {{ ghost_dir }} && \
    ghost install {{ ghost_version }} \
    --url {{ ghost_url }} \
    --db mysql \
    --dbhost {{ db_host }} \
    --dbuser {{ db_user }} \
    --dbpass {{ db_pass }} \
    --dbname {{ db_name }} \
    --no-setup-nginx \
    --no-setup-ssl \
    --process systemd \
    --start \
    --no-prompt
  args:
    chdir: "{{ ghost_dir }}"
    creates: "{{ ghost_dir }}/current"
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Also, to avoid sudo prompts for ghost:

- name: Allow ghost user passwordless sudo
  copy:
    dest: /etc/sudoers.d/ghost
    content: |
      ghost ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /bin/systemctl
      ghost ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /bin/systemctl, /bin/mv, /usr/bin/mkdir, /usr/bin/chown
    mode: '0440'
    validate: 'visudo -cf %s'
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3. Restore Ghost Backup (restore_ghost.yml)

Download + extract your backup content:

- name: Download and unarchive ghost backup
  unarchive:
    src: "{{ restore_url }}"
    dest: "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
    remote_src: true
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Make sure permissions are set correctly:

- name: Fix permissions
  file:
    path: "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
    owner: "{{ ghost_user }}"
    group: "{{ ghost_user }}"
    recurse: yes
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Then drop in the config:

- name: Template config.production.json
  template:
    src: config.production.json.j2
    dest: "{{ ghost_dir }}/config.production.json"
    owner: "{{ ghost_user }}"
    group: "{{ ghost_user }}"
    mode: "0640"
  notify: restart ghost
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Ghost Config Template (config.production.json.j2) 

{
  "url": "{{ ghost_url }}",
  "database": {
    "client": "mysql",
    "connection": {
      "host": "{{ db_host }}",
      "user": "{{ db_user }}",
      "password": "{{ db_pass }}",
      "database": "{{ db_name }}"
    }
  },
  "mail": {
    "transport": "{{ mail_transport }}",
    "options": {
      "from": {{ mail_from | to_json }},
      "host": "{{ mail_host }}",
      "port": {{ mail_port }},
      "secure": {{ mail_secure | to_json }},
      "auth": {
        "user": "{{ mail_user }}",
        "pass": "{{ mail_pass }}"
      }
    }
  },
  "process": "systemd",
  "paths": {
    "contentPath": "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
  }
}
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Handler (handlers/main.yml) 

- name: restart ghost
  command: ghost restart
  args:
    chdir: "{{ ghost_dir }}"
  become: true
  become_user: "{{ ghost_user }}"
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Running the Playbook

Create a simple hosts.ini:

[ghost]
your.server.ip ansible_user=ubuntu
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Then trigger it:

ansible-playbook -i hosts.ini ghost.yml
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Summary

This setup gives you:

  • A clean MariaDB + Ghost CMS stack on any Ubuntu box
  • Automated Ghost install using CLI with systemd
  • SMTP-ready configuration
  • Backup restore support
  • No sudo prompts ever again for systemctl

🔁 Want to scale this with nginx, SSL (Certbot), or Cloudflare? Plug those in as separate roles.

Pro Tips

  • Use Ansible Vault for secrets like SMTP credentials.
  • Schedule ghost backup via cron + Ansible-managed scripts.
  • Ghost upgrades? Just ghost update inside a task + service restart.

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Top comments (2)

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nevodavid profile image
Nevo David •

insane amount of actual how-to here, gotta admit seeing more infra get automated makes me want to redo my whole personal stack - you ever hit a point where adding automation feels like more work than doing it by hand for a while or nah

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dotallio profile image
Dotallio •

Really clean automation flow! Love how you handled sudo permissions and backup restores. Have you tried plugging in SSL or nginx to this role yet, or is that your next step?