This role will allow you to bootstrap a system over SSH using ansible. Typical applications include remote installing via bootable thumb drive or PXE boot or installing virtual machines using the host system. The author personally uses this for all his Debian installation needs.

• Your own partition layout: You can choose your own partition layout
• Encryption: Encrypt partitions and hard drives with a pre-shared key (it is strongly suggested you use ansible-vault here)
• ZFS is supported, even/especially as a root device

• You can't have the same names for ZFS pools and crypto devices
• requires a /boot and BIOS boot partition for encrypted / ZFS

• Debian
  • Stretch
  • Buster (untested)
  • Bullseye (untested)
• Ubuntu
  • bionic (18.04 LTS)
  • disco (19.04)
  • focal (20.04)
  • hirsute (21.04)
  • impish (21.10) (will install newer debootstrap)

Minor modifications will likely make it possible to install newer and perhaps older versions as well, or even other Debian based distributions. There are some sanity checks executed, depending on lists in vars/main.yml, so you would need to add the distribution codename there. Pull requests welcome.

This will make a few modifications to the system that is being used as install medium. This includes installing a few packages, otherwise everything should be cleaned up afterwards.

• It will install the eatmydata and debootstrap package
• It will install cryptsetup for encrypted targets
• It will install ZFS tools when using ZFS

Normally it is assumed that a some sort of PXE or USB rescue system is used, some caveats apply otherwise with regards to device names. As an example, you can't use the same name for any device mapper devices (luks encryption) or ZFS pools.

release: The release codename (required, example: cosmic)
root_password: Hashed, Salted root password, you can use mkpasswd to create one (Example: $1$sfQaZkVR$Vo/0pjmJaljzakEQFCr7Q/, obviously don't use this one ;) )
use_serial: Serial device to use for console / grub
use_tmpfs: Bootstrap to tmpfs, it's quicker and may reduce wear on flash (default: yes)
use_efi: In case the system supports UEFI, "grub-efi" will be installed on te target system, otherwise "grub-pc" (default: yes). This requires a VFAT partition available at /boot/efi.
kernel_cmdline: Anything you need/want to pass to the kernel (default: provided by distro)
layout: Dictionary of partitions / devices (required, see below)
md: List of DM-RAID devices (see below)
lvm: List of LVM volumes (see below)
install_ppa: PPAs to install (Ubuntu Only, see below)
install_packages: List of packages to install
dbstrp_zfs_backport Use the ZFS backport repo from https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/zfs
zfs_pool: ZFS pool (see ZFS section)
zfs_fs: ZFS filesystems (see ZFS section)
zfs_root: ZFS devices to use as root
wipe: Set to to string "ABSOLUTELY" if you wish to wipe the disk, this will remove any disklabels present as well as issue a TRIM/UNMAP for the device. Useful when you want to overwrite a target. Please use extreme caution

dbstrp_user:
name: A name of debootstrap user (default: debootstrap)
uid: UID of debootstrap user (default: 65533)
group: A group name of debootstrap user (default: name of debootstrap user)
gid: GID of debootstrap user (default: uid of debootstrap user)
password: A hashed password of debootstrap user (default: *)
non_unique: Ability to create non unique user (default: yes)

Layout is a list of dictionaries, every dictionary representing a target device. The dictionary contains the device names, as well as another list of dictionaries representing partitions (as you can see, I like my complex data structures).

Elements in the device dictionary:
device: Path to the device
partitions: List of partition dictionary
skip_grub: boolean set to yes if you want to skip installing grub on this device (default False)

num: Ascending number, a limitation here, just make sure it increments with every element
size: size with qualifier (M for Megabytes etc.), leave empty for the rest of available space
type: GTID typecode, for example 8200 for linux, see table below for common type codes
fs: Target filesystem (optional, for example ext4, xfs, not needed for zfs)
mount: Where to mount this device (optional, example /boot)
encrypt: Set to yes if you want encryption
target: Target name for device mapper (required when using encryption, for example cryptroot)
label filesystem label to use
partlabel partition label to use, defaults to label if defined, otherwise no label will be set.

Within the md list you can set up DM RAID devices. List items are dictionaries supporting the following keys:

level: RAID level to be used (one of 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10) required
bitmap: Device to use for bitmap, default "internal", use "none" to disable bitmap
chunk_size: RAID chunk size (required for all RAID levels except 1)
name: Device name required
members: List of devices to add to RAID

Encryption and mount options are supported here. Please note that the order is

1. RAID, 2. Encryption, 3. LVM, so it is currently not possible to create a RAID of two LUKS devices or encrypt an LVM volume.

passphrase: Passphrase for encryption, use ansible-vault here please. (required when using encryption)
cipher: Encryption cipher (default aes-xts-plain64)
hash: Hash type for LUKS (default sha512)
iter-time: Time to spend on passphrase processing (default 5000) key-size: Encryption key size (default 256, values depend on cipher, for AES 128, 256, 512)
luks-type: LUKS metadata type (Default luks2)
luks-sector-size: Sector size for LUKS encryption (default 512, possible values: 512, 4096)
target: Device name to be used (required)

LVM pvs can be created on disks, partitions as well as encrypted devices (use /dev/mapper/target for LUKS). This is a list of dictionaries, dictionary keys from partition dictionary can be used (except encryption) like mount, fs etc.

lvm: Dictionary of lvol options, these are passed to the lvol noduule as such, all options available to that module can be used.

layout:
  - device: '/dev/sdb'
    partitions:
      - num: 1
        size: 1M
        type: ef02
      - num: 2
        size: 253M
        type: 8300
        fs: ext4
        mount: /boot
      - num: 3 # Notice absence of size here, will use full disk
        type: 8300
        fs: ext4
        mount: /

Simple list of PPA to use, example:

install_ppa:
  - ppa:nils-nm/zfs-linux-unofficial

This defines the devices to use for the ZFS pool, you can use devices and targets defined in layout. A list of dictionaries with the following elements:

poolname: name of the ZFS pool (required, example rpool)
devices: List of devices, you can insert key words like mirror, raidz etc. like you would when using zpool create. (required, example below)
options: List of options for the pool
fs_options: Options for all filesystems in that pool

This looks a lot like the pool definition above, again a list of dictionaries (they call me the one trick pony). Dictionary definition:

path: Path of the dataset, make sure that they are in the correct order, (required, example: rpool/root)
options: List of filesystem options, see examples

This is used when you want to use ZFS as your root filesystem. Set it to the dataset which you want to use as root, example: rpool/ROOT/Ubuntu

This example is plucked from my own configuration, it will create a lot of datasets with different options and should give you a good overview over the possibilities.

zfs_pool:
  - poolname: rpool
    devices:
    - /dev/mapper/cryptroot
    options:
    - ashift=12
    fs_options:
    - canmount=off
    - mountpoint=/
    - compression=lz4
    - atime=off
    - normalization=formD

zfs_fs:
  - path: 'rpool/ROOT'
    options:
    - canmount=off
    - mountpoint=none
  - path: 'rpool/ROOT/ubuntu'
    options:
    - mountpoint=/
  - path: 'rpool/home'
    options:
    - setuid=off
  - path: 'rpool/home/root'
    options:
    - mountpoint=/root
  - path: 'rpool/var'
    options:
    - exec=off
    - setuid=off
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var
  - path: 'rpool/var/cache'
    options:
    - 'com.sun:auto-snapshot=false'
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/cache
  - path: 'rpool/var/log'
    optons:
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/log
  - path: 'rpool/var/spool'
    optons:
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/spool
  - path: 'rpool/var/tmp'
    optons:
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/tmp
  - path: 'rpool/var/lib'
    optons:
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/lib
  - path: 'rpool/var/lib/dpkg'
    options:
    - exec=on
    - mountpoint=legacy
    mount: /var/lib/dpkg
  - path: 'rpool/srv'

zfs_root: 'rpool/ROOT/ubuntu'

The directory meta/tests contains a test playbook, inventories and Vagrantfile for local testing. The vagrant box by default contains three devices, one for the source vagrant box and target devices for your install (/dev/sdb, /dev/sdc). To test your new installation you would have to switch boot devices in the SeaBIOS boot menu (easily achieved via the VirtualBox GUI). Currently, only VirtualBox is supported.