Installing Ansible in a Python virtual environment enables us to maintain the Ansible dependencies which are basically python packages, independent of the ones used by the Operating System.
Below are the steps involved in installing Ansible in a virtual environment, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Operating System.
Install preliminary packages
sudo easy_install virtualenv
sudo yum -y install git gnupg2 python-devel python-crypto python-setuptools python2-pip python-virtualenv sshpass gcc openssl-devel
Create directory for Ansible
mkdir -p ~/virt/ansible-2.7.0
Create virtual environment for Ansible
virtualenv --no-site-packages ~/virt/ansible-2.7.0
Create alias for activating Ansible in virtual environment
echo "alias virtansible='source ~/virt/ansible-2.7.0/bin/activate'" >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc
Activate virtual environment
virtansible
In virtual environment, Upgrade python pip and setup-tools
(ansible-2.7.0) $ pip install --upgrade pip
(ansible-2.7.0) $ pip install --upgrade setuptools
Install Ansible in virtual environment
(ansible-2.7.0) $ pip install ansible
Note, any python packages that you may require can be installed similarly by running command ‘pip install package_name‘. Example: ‘pip install git‘ .
You should be able to verify installation of ansible in the virtual environment, by checking the Ansible and python path, which should show up under ~/virt/ansible-2.7.0
[admin@unixutils ~]$ virtansible (ansible) [admin@unixutils ~]$ which ansible ~/venv/ansible/bin/ansible (ansible) [admin@unixutils ~]$ which python ~/venv/ansible/bin/python (ansible) [admin@unixutils ~]$ deactivate [admin@unixutils ~]$
Note, you can exit from the Ansible virtual environment by running the command ‘deactivate’.
