Description

An Ansible role which installs and configures Graylog for log management.

Dependencies

• Only Ansible versions > 2.5.0 are supported.
• Java 8 - Ubuntu Xenial and up support OpenJDK 8 by default. For other distributions, consider backports accordingly
• Elasticsearch
• Tested on
  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • Ubuntu 18.04
  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • Debian 9
  • Debian 10
  • Centos 7
  • Centos 8

If you require Nginx to be installed, include the official Nginx role in your playbook.

Usage

• You need at least 4GB of memory to run Graylog
• Generate the password hash for the admin user:
  • echo -n yourpassword | sha256sum # Linux
  • echo -n yourpassword | shasum -a 256 # Mac

Here is an example of a playbook targeting Vagrant (Ubuntu Xenial):

- hosts: "all"
  remote_user: "ubuntu"
  become: True
  vars:
    es_enable_xpack: False
    es_instance_name: "graylog"
    es_heap_size: "1g"
    es_config:
      node.name: "graylog"
      cluster.name: "graylog"
      http.port: 9200
      transport.tcp.port: 9300
      network.host: "127.0.0.1"
    graylog_version: 3.3
    graylog_install_java: False # Elasticsearch role already installed Java
    graylog_password_secret: "2jueVqZpwLLjaWxV" # generate with: pwgen -s 96 1
    graylog_root_password_sha2: "8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918"
    graylog_http_bind_address: "{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000"
    graylog_http_publish_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"
    graylog_http_external_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"
  roles:
    - role: "graylog2.graylog-ansible-role"
      tags:
        - "graylog"

• Create a playbook file with that content, e.g. your_playbook.yml
• Fetch this role ansible-galaxy install -n -p ./roles Graylog2.graylog-ansible-role
• Install role's dependencies ansible-galaxy install -r roles/Graylog2.graylog-ansible-role/requirements.yml -p ./roles
• Apply the playbook to a Vagrant box ansible-playbook your_playbook.yml -i "127.0.0.1:2222,"
• Login to Graylog by opening http://127.0.0.1:9000 in your browser. Default username and password is admin

Variables

# Basic server settings
graylog_version: 4.0     # Required
graylog_full_version: "4.0.6-1" # Optional, if not provided, the latest revision of {{ graylog_version }} will be installed
graylog_is_master: "True"
graylog_password_secret: "2jueVqZpwLLjaWxV" # generate with: pwgen -s 96 1
graylog_root_password_sha2: "8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918"

graylog_http_bind_address: "{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000"
graylog_http_publish_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"
graylog_http_external_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"

Take a look into defaults/main.yml to get an overview of all configuration parameters.

If you need to configure a graylog setting that we haven't set up, you can use graylog_additional_config to declare it:

graylog_additional_config:
  elasticsearch_discovery_default_user: my_username
  elasticsearch_discovery_default_password: "{{ my_password }}"

More detailed example

• Set up roles_path = ./roles in ansible.cfg ([defaults] block)
• Install role ansible-galaxy install Graylog2.graylog-ansible-role
• Install role's dependencies ansible-galaxy install -r roles/Graylog2.graylog-ansible-role/requirements.yml
• Set up playbook (see example below):

- hosts: "server"
  become: True
  vars:
    es_instance_name: "graylog"
    es_scripts: False
    es_templates: False
    es_version_lock: False
    es_heap_size: "1g"
    es_config:
      node.name: "graylog"
      cluster.name: "graylog"
      http.port: 9200
      transport.tcp.port: 9300
      network.host: "127.0.0.1"
      node.data: True
      node.master: True
    graylog_version: 4.0
    graylog_install_java: False # Elasticsearch role already installed Java
    graylog_password_secret: "2jueVqZpwLLjaWxV" # generate with: pwgen -s 96 1
    graylog_root_password_sha2: "8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918"
    graylog_http_bind_address: "{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000"
    graylog_http_publish_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"
    graylog_http_external_uri: "http://{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}:9000/"

  roles:
    - role: "graylog2.graylog-ansible-role"
      tags:
        - "graylog"

• Run the playbook with ansible-playbook -i inventory_file your_playbook.yml
• Login to Graylog by opening http://<host IP> in your browser, default username and password is admin

Explicit playbook of roles

It's good to be explicit, these are all the roles that you need to run for Graylog.

Note: in this example vars are in a more appropriate place at group_vars/group/vars

- name: "Apply roles for Graylog servers"
  hosts: "graylog_servers"
  become: True
  vars:
    graylog_install_elasticsearch: False
    graylog_install_mongodb:       False

  roles:
    - role: lean_delivery.java
      version: 7.1.0
      when: graylog_install_java

    - role: "elastic.elasticsearch"
      tags:
        - "elasticsearch"
        - "graylog_servers"

    - role: "graylog2.graylog-ansible-role"
      tags:
        - "graylog"
        - "graylog_servers"

Conditional role dependencies

Dependencies can be enabled/disabled with the host_vars graylog_install_*. Take look into meta/main.yml for more information. Keep in mind that you have to install all dependencies even when they are disabled to prevent errors.

Tests

If you'd like to run the Molecule tests, you'll need a few things installed:

• Vagrant
• libvirt
• Molecule
• testinfra

Note that this is ONLY required if you want to run the test harness. You don't need any of this to run the playbook. This is a special setup that allows you to test the Ansible playbook against disposable VMs.

Install Notes

Setting up Molecule requires installing a number tools for the VM enviroment. The following are notes from a successful install on Ubuntu 20.04.

Install Virtualenv, Molecule, and testinfra

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip libssl-dev python3-virtualenv
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install "molecule[lint]"
pip3 install testinfra

Install Vagrant and libvirt

sudo apt-get install -y bridge-utils dnsmasq-base ebtables libvirt-bin libvirt-dev qemu-kvm qemu-utils ruby-dev
sudo wget -nv https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.2.9/vagrant_2.2.9_x86_64.deb
sudo dpkg -i vagrant_2.2.9_x86_64.deb
vagrant --version
sudo apt-get install ruby-libvirt qemu libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients ebtables
sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev libxml2-dev libvirt-dev zlib1g-dev
vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt
vagrant plugin list
pip3 install python-vagrant molecule-vagrant

Test that Vagrant works

vagrant init generic/ubuntu1804
vagrant up --provider=libvirt
vagrant ssh
vagrant halt

Test that Molecule works

git clone https://github.com/Graylog2/graylog-ansible-role.git
cd graylog-ansible-role
molecule create
molecule converge
molecule login
systemctl status graylog-server
exit
molecule destroy

Commands

To spin up a test VM:

export MOLECULE_DISTRO='generic/ubuntu1804'
molecule create

To run the Ansible playbook:

molecule converge

To login to the VM:

molecule login

To destroy the VM:

molecule destroy

To test against other distros, you can also set the MOLECULE_DISTRO environment variable to one of these:

export MOLECULE_DISTRO='centos/7'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='centos/8'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='debian/jessie64'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='debian/stretch64'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='debian/buster64'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='generic/ubuntu1604'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='generic/ubuntu1804'
export MOLECULE_DISTRO='generic/ubuntu2004'

Further Reading

Great articles by Pablo Daniel Estigarribia Davyt on how to use this role:

• Install Graylog
• Receive messages from Logstash
• Monitor Graylog with NSCA

License

Author: Marius Sturm (marius@graylog.com) and contributors

License: Apache 2.0