How to install Wordpress using Ansible
Estimated time to read: 7 minutes
In this tutorial, you learn how to configure a Debian-based Compute instance with Apache, MySQL, PHP and configure and install Wordpress using Ansible.
In another Ansible tutorial, we explained how you can deploy an instance and install a Lamp server using Ansible. Because Wordpress needs a web server (for example Apache), a database (MySQL) and PHP to run on we are going to use those playbooks as our starting point.
Prerequisites
For this tutorial, you'll need the following:
- A Fuga Cloud account.
- A Linux machine (either an instance on Fuga Cloud or your local workstation) capable of running Ansible.
- An SSH key known by the Fuga Cloud API.
- A downloaded copy of your openrc.sh file.
- The CLI tools installed.
- Ansible installed on your Linux machine
In this tutorial, we'll assume an Ubuntu / Debian derived Linux distribution. With small changes, the commands should be compatible with any Linux flavor.
Step 1: Creating an Instance on Fuga Cloud
First, we want to create a playbook to create an instance on Fuga Cloud. Make sure you replace MY_SSH_KEY
with your key pair name.
Create a file within the ~/ansible
directory called deploy.yaml
and enter the following playbook:
- name: Deploy on OpenStack
hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- name: Deploy an instance
os_server:
state: present
name: lamp01
image: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
key_name: MY_SSH_KEY
wait: yes
flavor: c2.small
network: public
meta:
hostname: lamp01.localdomain
Pay close attention to the indentation. Save the file and quit the editor. Now make sure your openrc.sh
environment variables are set and run the following command from within the ~/ansible
directory:
The output should look similar to this:
The deployment can take a couple of minutes to complete. After the deployment, we need to make sure the server is reachable on its hostname through SSH. You can set up DNS for the instance or we can add it to our hosts file.
A simple oneliner for adding the server to the hosts file:
openstack list | grep lamp01 | awk {'print $12 " " $4'} | sed -e 's/[^ =]*=\(.*\),/\1/' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
Or, lookup the IP in the dashboard.
Lastly, we need to add the hostname to Ansible’s config file. Open the file /etc/ansible/hosts
and add the following:
Now we'll need to fix some dependencies for Ansible to be able to fully manage the new instance. Create an Ansible playbook. We’ll call it setup.yaml:
- name: Setup ansible needed things.
hosts: all
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: "Update repository cache and Install Python 2 needed for running Ansible."
raw: sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get -y install python-simplejson
Ansible needs Python 2 with simplejson before it can do its things. The above playbook will install it.
Now run it:
ansible-playbook setup.yaml
This can again take about 15 to 30 seconds.
You should get asked to approve the SSH Key Fingerprint of the server. If, for some reason, it gives an error, the first thing to check is if you can ssh into the new instance on the hostname you specified in /etc/ansible/hosts
Your output should look similar to this:
Step 2: Making it a LAMP server
Now that we have our Ubuntu server up and running, let's install Wordpress. We'll make some playbooks to install, and setup Apache, MySQL, and PHP and eventually install Wordpress on it.
Setting up Apache 2 and PHP 5 is easy. But we also want to create a bit more structure. So let's start with creating an Ansible/roles directory where we can put tasks file specific for certain roles.
Next, we’ll create the apache role file. Open the file ~/ansible/roles/apache.yaml: This playbook is almost the same as in the other tutorial, but we added some extra PHP packages necessary for running Wordpress. Paste in the following YAML config:- name: install apache & php
remote_user: ubuntu
hosts: all
become: true
become_user: root
gather_facts: true
tasks:
- name: "Install apache2"
package: name=apache2 state=present
- name: "Install apache2-php5"
package: name=libapache2-mod-php state=present
- name: "Install php-cli"
package: name=php-cli state=present
- name: "Install php-mcrypt"
package: name=php-mcrypt state=present
- name: "Install php-gd"
package: name=php-gd state=present
- name: Install php-fpm
package: name=php-fpm state=present
- name: Install php-common
package: name=php-common state=present
- name: Install php-mbstring
package: name=php-mbstring state=present
- name: Install php-xmlrpc
package: name=php-xmlrpc state=present
- name: Install php-xml
package: name=php-xml state=present
- name: Install php-mysql
package: name=php-mysql state=present
- name: Install php zip
package: name=php-zip state=present
- name: Install php-curl
package: name=php-curl state=present
Next, we'll do the same for MySQL. Don't forget to replace the MySQL root password and wpuser password!
This playbook is also almost the same as in the other tutorial, but we added some extra rules to create a database called 'wordpress' and create a new MySQL user called 'wpuser' for running Wordpress
- name: Install MySQL for production ready server
user: ubuntu
hosts: all
become: True
become_user: root
vars:
MySQL_root_pass: ReplaceWithYourPassword
tasks:
- name: Set MySQL root password before installing
debconf: name="mysql-server" question="mysql-server/root_password" value="" vtype="password"
- name: Confirm MySQL root password before installing
debconf: name="mysql-server" question="mysql-server/root_password_again" value="" vtype="password"
- name: test1
apt:
package:
- mysql-server
- mysql-client
- python-mysqldb
state: present
force: yes
update_cache: yes
cache_valid_time: 3600
when: ansible_os_family == "Debian"
- name: Deletes anonymous MySQL server user for localhost
mysql_user: user="" state="absent" login_password="" login_user=root
- name: Secures the MySQL root user
mysql_user: user="root" password="" host="{{item}}" login_password="" login_user=root
with_items:
- 127.0.0.1
- localhost
- ::1
- ""
- name: Removes the MySQL test database
mysql_db: db=test state=absent login_password="" login_user=root
- name: Create a new database called wordpress
mysql_db:
login_user: root
login_password: ""
name: wordpress
state: present
- name: Configure new MySQL user called wpuser
mysql_user:
login_user: root
login_password: ""
name: wpuser
password: wpuser_password_replace_with_your_own
priv: 'wordpress.*:ALL'
Now, let's create the wordpress role file. Open the file ~/ansible/roles/wordpress.yaml
:
Paste in the following YAML config:
- name: Install WordPress
remote_user: ubuntu
hosts: all
become: true
become_user: root
gather_facts: true
tasks:
- name: Download and Extract WorPress
unarchive:
src: https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
dest: /var/www/
remote_src: yes
- name: Update default Apache site
lineinfile:
path: /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
state: present
regexp: '(.)+DocumentRoot /var/www/html'
line: 'DocumentRoot /var/www/wordpress'
- name: Restart Apache
service:
name: apache2
state: restarted
- name: Copy sample config file
command: mv /var/www/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
- name: Update Wordpress config file
lineinfile:
path: /var/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
regexp: "{{item.regexp}}"
line: "{{item.line}}"
with_items:
- {'regexp': "define\\( 'DB_NAME', '(.)+' \\);", 'line': "define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );"}
- {'regexp': "define\\( 'DB_USER', '(.)+' \\);", 'line': "define( 'DB_USER', 'wpuser' );"}
- {'regexp': "define\\( 'DB_PASSWORD', '(.)+' \\);", 'line': "define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'wpuser_password_replace_with_your_own' );"}
- name: Update ownership to Apache user
file:
path: /var/www/wordpress/
state: directory
recurse: yes
owner: www-data
- name: Set the correct permissions on Wordpress directories
command: find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
- name: Set the correct permissions for Wordpress files
command: find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
Last, create the LAMP role file. This file will include our Apache, MySQL & Wordpress roles, this way we don't have to play all the files seperatly but we can play them in one run.
- name: install LAMP Stack
hosts: all
remote_user: ubuntu
become: true
become_user: root
gather_facts: true
- name: Include Apache
import_playbook: apache.yaml
- name: Include MySQL
import_playbook: mysql.yaml
- name: Include MySQL
import_playbook: wordpress.yaml
Finally, we'll run the playbook:
You should have output similar to:
That's it! You now have a LAMP server with Ubuntu, Apache 2, MySQL, PHP and Wordpress ready to go.
You can check your newly installed Wordpress by typing the public ip of the server or domain name in your browser. Please make sure that your security group allows port 80 for http and port 443 for https.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you’ve used Ansible to automatically create, deploy and configure an Ubuntu-based OpenStack instance with Apache, MySQL, PHP and Wordpress.
More Ansible tutorials can be found in the Fuga Academy.
Don't forget to set the right security groups for your server (only the default policy is added during creation). Otherwise the webserver might not be reachable.