Test Ansible Roles with Multipass VMs

Verify Ansible Roles with Multipass

This guide runs the Ansible provisioning playbook against a Multipass VM to validate the roles on a systemd host with real kernel and networking behavior.

Prerequisites

• Multipass installed on your workstation
• Ansible installed on your workstation
• A dedicated SSH key stored at ansible/.keys/multipass.pub

Step 1: Create a dedicated SSH key

mkdir -p ansible/.keys
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ansible/.keys/multipass -N ""

Step 2: Launch a test VM

multipass launch --name ansible-test --cpus 2 --memory 4G --disk 20G 24.04

Step 3: Add your SSH key

multipass exec ansible-test -- bash -c "mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/.ssh && cat >> /home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys" < ansible/.keys/multipass.pub

Step 4: Create a temporary inventory

cat <<'EOF' > /tmp/ansible-multipass-test.yaml
all:
  children:
    k8s_nodes:
      hosts:
        ansible-test:
          ansible_host: 192.168.2.200
          ansible_user: ubuntu
EOF

Replace the IP address with the one shown in multipass list.

Step 5: Run the playbook

ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH=ansible/roles \
ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE=ansible/.keys/multipass \
ansible-playbook -i /tmp/ansible-multipass-test.yaml \
  ansible/playbooks/provision-cpu.yaml \
  -e @ansible/group_vars/all.yaml

Step 6: Clean up the VM

multipass delete ansible-test
multipass purge