# Ansible Arch Linux Libvirt Lab

This playbook is intended to help automate the deployment of Arch Linux guests to libvirt on localhost.

This exists mainly as an excercise while I teach myself ansible, and is mostly a reimplementation of this article: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/build-VM-fast-ansible


## TODO

- Usage of `virt-customize` doesn't fully work on this image.
  - Root password does get changed, but hostname remains unchanged.
  - Move to using `cloud-init` as shown in the Arch Wiki articles linked in the [arch-boxes](https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/arch-boxes/) readme.
    - Maybe also lock the root and default user accounts [as suggested on the `cloud-init` Arch Wiki page](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Cloud-init#Default_user_configuration)
- Install and enable QEMU Guest Agent on new guest to allow immediate access to new VM via `community.libvirt.libvirt` ansible module
- Minimize/generalize the VM template XML as much as possible.
  - Currently, the XML is only slightly modified from one generated by `virt-manager`, so may include lots of unnecessary faff.
  - Have had issues (already fixed) with the OS Type specification making `virt-manager` unhappy when trying to access new VMs created by this playbook. It's possible this issue might crop up again in the future.
  - Would like to retain the ability to generate VMs that are usable via `virt-manager`
    - Maybe create a second ultra-minimal XML template for VMs that won't be used with `virt-manager`?
- Add checksum verification for downloaded sources.
  - Will require some more fiddling than what the source article suggests due to Arch's release schedule.
- More documentation


## Contributing

As always, patches and issues welcome!