Making Vagrant install the latest version of Ansible using Pip and run it as root in Ubuntu Virtual Machines

As previously mentioned, I use Ansible a lot inside Virtual machines orchestrated with Vagrant. Today’s brief tip is how to make Vagrant install the absolutely latest version of Ansible on Ubuntu boxes with Pip.

Here’s your Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"
  config.vm.provision "ansible_local", run: "always" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook         = "setup.yml"
    ansible.playbook_command = "sudo ansible-playbook"
    ansible.install_mode     = "pip"
    ansible.pip_install_cmd  = "(until sudo apt update ; do sleep 1 ; done && sudo apt install -y python3-pip && sudo rm -f /usr/bin/pip && sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pip3 /usr/bin/pip && sudo -H pip install --upgrade pip) 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/vagrant-init"
  end
end

“But, that pip_install_cmd block is huge”, I hear you cry!

Well, yes, but let’s split that out into a slightly more readable code block! (Yes, I’ve removed the “&&” for clarity sake – it just means “only execute the next command if this one worked”)

(
  # Wait until we get the apt "package lock" released
  until sudo apt update
  do
    # By sleeping for 1 second increments until it works
    sleep 1
  done

  # Then install python3-pip
  sudo apt install -y python3-pip

  # Just in case python2-pip is installed, delete it
  sudo rm -f /usr/bin/pip

  # And symbolically link pip3 to pip
  sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pip3 /usr/bin/pip

  # And then do a pip self-upgrade
  sudo -H pip install --upgrade pip

# And output this to the end of the file /var/log/vagrant-init, including any error messages
) 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/vagrant-init

What does this actually do? Well, pip is the python package manager, so we’re asking for the latest packaged version to be installed (it often isn’t particularly with older releases of, well, frankly any Linux distribution) – this is the “pip_install_cmd” block. Then, once pip is installed, it’ll run “pip install ansible” – which will give it the latest version available to Pip, and then when that’s all done, it’ll run “sudo ansible-playbook /vagrant/setup.yml”

Featured image is “From one bloody orange!” by “Terry Madeley” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY license.