Basic Server Configuration

An Ansible playbook for automating secure server setup and configuration with sensible defaults for systems.

🚀 Features

• System Updates: Keeps your servers up-to-date with the latest security patches
• Logging & Reporting:
  • Configures system logging with rsyslog
  • Sets up log rotation with logrotate
  • Generates HTML execution reports
  • Maintains detailed Ansible logs
• User Management: Creates a secure non-root user with sudo privileges
• SSH Hardening: Configures SSH for key-based authentication only
• Firewall Setup: Installs and configures UFW with secure defaults
• Security Enhancements:
  • Fail2ban for intrusion prevention
  • Automatic security updates
  • Sensible security defaults
• Time Synchronization: Configures NTP for accurate system time
• Essential Packages: Installs common utilities (vim, curl, htop, git, mtr)

📋 Prerequisites

• Ansible 2.9+
• SSH key pair
• Target Ubuntu servers
• Local environment variables

🔧 Setup & Configuration

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/basic-server-configuration.git
   cd basic-server-configuration
   

2. Configure environment variables in the .env file, you can follow the sample file provided and fill in your data

3. Update the inventory.ini file with your server IP addresses:

   [servers]
   192.168.1.10
   192.168.1.11
   # Add your servers here

4. Run the playbook:

   ./run.sh
   

🛡️ What Gets Configured

• Creates a new sudo user with SSH key authentication
• Disables SSH password authentication and root login
• Configures firewall (UFW) to allow only SSH
• Sets up Fail2ban to prevent brute-force attacks
• Configures automatic security updates
• Installs essential system utilities
• Sets timezone to Europe/Kyiv (configurable)
• Configures comprehensive system logging with rsyslog
• Sets up log rotation to manage log file sizes
• Creates a dedicated directory for application logs
• Implements basic log monitoring for large log files
• Generates detailed HTML reports for each playbook run

⚙️ Customization

The playbook has been modularized into roles for better organization and maintainability. To customize:

• System Updates: Edit roles/system_updates/tasks/main.yml
• Logging Setup: Edit roles/logging_setup/tasks/main.yml
  • Modify rsyslog configuration in roles/logging_setup/templates/rsyslog.conf.j2
  • Adjust log rotation settings in roles/logging_setup/files/logrotate.conf
• Time Configuration: Edit roles/time_configuration/tasks/main.yml
• SSH Setup: Edit roles/ssh_setup/tasks/main.yml
• User Management: Edit roles/user_management/tasks/main.yml
• Package Installation: Edit roles/package_installation/tasks/main.yml
• Security Setup: Edit roles/security_setup/tasks/main.yml
• Automatic Updates: Edit roles/automatic_updates/tasks/main.yml

Common customizations:

• Change the timezone: Edit the timezone task in roles/time_configuration/tasks/main.yml
• Modify the package list: Edit the package list in roles/package_installation/tasks/main.yml
• Adjust security settings: Edit the security settings in roles/security_setup/tasks/main.yml
• Configure logging:
  • Enable remote logging: Uncomment and configure the remote logging line in roles/logging_setup/templates/rsyslog.conf.j2
  • Change log rotation frequency: Modify rotation settings in roles/logging_setup/files/logrotate.conf
  • Add custom application logs: Add new log paths in both rsyslog and logrotate configurations
• Add or remove configuration tasks: Add or remove tasks in the appropriate role's task file

🏷️ Using Tags

The playbook now supports tags, allowing you to selectively run or skip specific parts of the configuration. This is useful for:

• Running only specific components during testing
• Updating only certain aspects of your server configuration
• Skipping parts that you've already configured or don't need

Available Tags

• system: System-related tasks
• updates: Update-related tasks (both system and automatic updates)
• logging: Logging configuration tasks
  • rsyslog: rsyslog-specific configuration
  • logrotate: logrotate-specific configuration
  • log_monitoring: Log monitoring tasks
  • log_directory: Log directory creation
• time: Time configuration tasks
• ssh: SSH configuration tasks
• users: User management tasks
• packages: Package installation tasks
• security: Security-related tasks
  • fail2ban: Fail2ban configuration
  • ufw: Firewall configuration
• automatic: Automatic update configuration

Using Tags

To run only specific parts of the playbook, use the --tags option:

# Run only security-related tasks
ansible-playbook playbook.yml --tags security

# Run only SSH and user management tasks
ansible-playbook playbook.yml --tags "ssh,users"

# Run only fail2ban configuration
ansible-playbook playbook.yml --tags fail2ban

To skip specific parts of the playbook, use the --skip-tags option:

# Run everything except automatic updates
ansible-playbook playbook.yml --skip-tags automatic

# Run everything except security and logging
ansible-playbook playbook.yml --skip-tags "security,logging"

You can also combine these approaches for more complex scenarios.

🤝 Contributions

Stars and contributions are highly appreciated! If you find this project useful, please consider:

• ⭐ Starring the repository
• 🐛 Opening issues for bugs or feature requests
• 📢 Sharing with fellow sysadmins and DevOps engineers

Let's collaborate to build a more robust, secure, and feature-rich server configuration tool together!

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.