Need to build a custom EE for AWX? I needed to do it for managing Windows hosts, but if you need any extra Python modules or Ansible collections, check out the other file snippets.
Install Python 3 (3.12 is latest as of this writing)
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3Create a new Python virtual environment for running Ansible, with the following Python packages installed
- Create
~/venv/ansible/requirements.txt(these Python requirements are for the venv only - they aren't to be installed on your custom EE unless you need them for some reason)
autopep8
ansible-core
ansible-builder
ansible-lint
ansible-navigator
flake8
yamllint
pytest
pytest-xdist
- Create Python venv and install Ansible tools
python3 -m venv ~/venv/ansible
source ~/venv/ansible/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install -r ~/venv/ansible/requirements.txt-
If it's a Git repo, add the
contextfolder to your.gitignore -
Add the
execution-environment.yml,requirements.txt, andrequirements.ymlfiles, which are included in this Gist, below this README file. -
Run the build command and push the image to your favorite cloud-based or self-hosted container registry. That's it!
ansible-builder build --tag=your.docker.registry.url/custom-ee:1.0.0 --container-runtime=docker --verbosity=3# Add extra tags like 'latest', if you want
docker image ls
docker image IMAGEHASH your.docker.registry.url/custom-ee:latest
# Push image to registry
docker push your.docker.registry.url/custom-ee:1.0.0I spent hours Googling how to create a custom EE for AWX that would allow me to run community Ansible collections (even just community.general!).
The standard base image when using version 1 (which every blog post you find says to do), for some reason, doesn't have anything newer than 2.13 of ansible-core, and any docs from Red Hat reference a base image that you need to be a RH customer in order to use. And I couldn't get the builder to pull ansible-core >= 2.15 without using version 3 - you can see why I started to pull my hair out.
It was a constant struggle to figure out solutions to the seemingly random Python build errors I was getting, and I ended up FINALLY piecing together a working config from various blog posts, Reddit threads, etc.
Many thanks to u/thenumberfourtytwo on Reddit for the custom EE image that he built, but I wanted to build my own that I could push to my own container registry. And also many thanks to u/MallocArray's comment which gave me a usable base image! The rest of the various links I used for reference are below.
Anyway, I wanted to put this together to help anyone that may stumble across this.
Enjoy!
- Error "too many open files" running jobs in AWX on custom EE's
- How to get Kerberos auth working between AWX and Windows hosts
- https://openthreat.ro/awx-building-custom-execution-environment/
- https://medium.com/@frederic.egmorte/awx-create-a-new-execution-environment-with-ansible-builder-aee127d5bbdd
- https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2023/05/08/how-create-execution-environments-using-ansible-builder
- https://www.reddit.com/r/awx/comments/16zkg7t/awx_ee_builder_docker_image_alternative_for/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/awx/comments/10rifoa/msg_winrm_or_requests_is_not_installed_no_module/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/awx/comments/zy24n2/how_do_you_make_community_modules_available/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/awx/comments/1089o3i/upgrade_ansible_version_in_awxoperator_in/
- https://weiyentan.github.io/2021/creating-execution-environments/
- ansible/ansible-builder#437
- ansible/ansible-builder#496
- https://github.com/aimcod/ansible-awx-ee
- https://github.com/aimcod/k8awx
- https://cloudbytes.dev/snippets/upgrade-python-to-latest-version-on-ubuntu-linux