Ansible installation and server preparation

Use ansible/prepare-ipsonic-probe.yml to prepare an ipsonic-probe host running Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS, AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux.

Ansible runs only on the controller, not on the target host. The target needs SSH, privilege escalation, Python 3 for Ansible modules, and distribution-managed packages from its standard repositories or an approved local mirror. The playbook uses ansible.builtin modules and requires no pip installation on the target.

Run from the controller

cp ansible/inventory.ini.example ansible/inventory.ini
# Edit target hostname and SSH user in inventory.ini.
ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory.ini ansible/prepare-ipsonic-probe.yml --ask-become-pass

The playbook installs python3, python3-requests, ca-certificates, and python3-yaml (Debian family) or python3-pyyaml (RPM family), copies ipsonic-probe and examples to /opt/ipsonic-probe, prepares /etc/ipsonic-probe, and validates imports and --help.

Check installation

ssh user@monitor.example '/usr/bin/python3 /opt/ipsonic-probe/ipsonic-probe.py --help'

Operational notes

• Use only approved distribution repositories or preconfigured internal mirrors.
• Bootstrap Python 3 before Ansible fact gathering on minimal installations.
• Store passwords, API tokens, and private CA keys outside public YAML examples; restrict permissions.
• Ansible does not enable background monitoring, install a daemon, or open firewall ports.
• Integrate checks into your existing Nagios, Icinga 2, Checkmk, cron or systemd scheduling separately.
• The requirements.txt in release archives documents OS package dependencies and is not intended for pip install -r.

Maintainer and disclaimer

Maintained by mati peterson (ipsonic@mailbox.org). Official project URL: https://ipsonic.com/probe/.

Disclaimer: This software and its examples are provided AS IS, without warranty of any kind. Use at your own risk. Review and validate configurations before production deployment.