Chapter 4. Building off of existing base EEs provided by Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Procedure

1. Log in to registry.redhat.io via Podman:

   $ podman login -u="[username]" -p="[token/hash]" registry.redhat.io

2. Pull an Automation Execution Environment image

   podman pull registry.redhat.io/ansible-automation-platform-21/ee-minimal-rhel8:latest

3. Configure your Ansible Builder files to specify any additional content to add to the new execution environment image which is based off of ee-minimal.

   1. For example, to add the Kubernetes Core Collection from Galaxy to the image, fill out the requirements.yml file as such:

      collections:
        - kubernetes.core

   2. For more information on definition files and their content, refer to to definition file breakdown section.

4. In the execution environment definition file, specify the filepath to the original ee-minimal container in the EE_BASE_IMAGE field. In doing so, your final execution-environment.yml file will look like the following:

   Example 4.2. A customized execution-environment.yml file

   version: 1
   
   build_arg_defaults:
     EE_BASE_IMAGE: 'example.registry.com/my-base-ee'
   
   dependencies:
     galaxy: requirements.yml

   Note

   Since this example uses the community version of kubernetes.core and not a certified collection from automation hub, we do not need to create an ansible.cfg nor reference that in our definition file.

5. Build the new execution environment image using the following command:

   $ ansible-builder build -t registry.redhat.io/[username]/new-ee

   where [username] specifies your username, and new-ee specifies the name of your new container image.

   1. Use the podman images command to confirm that your new container image is in that list:

      Example 4.3. Output of a podman images command with the image new-ee

      REPOSITORY          TAG     IMAGE ID      CREATED        SIZE
      localhost/new-ee    latest  f5509587efbb  3 minutes ago  769 MB

6. Verify your newly-created execution environment image via Ansible Navigator

7. Tag the image for use in your automation hub:

   $ podman tag registry.redhat.io/_[username]_/_new-ee_ [automation-hub-IP-address]/_[username]_/_new-ee_

8. Log in to your automation hub using Podman:

   Note

   You must have admin or appropriate container repository permissions for automation hub to push a container. See Managing containers in private automation hub in the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform documentation for more information.

   $ podman login -u="[username]" -p="[token/hash]" [automation-hub-IP-address]

9. Push your image to the container registry in automation hub:

   $ podman push [automation-hub-IP-address]/_[username]_/_new-ee_

10. Pull your new image into your automation controller instance:

    1. Navigate to automation controller.
    2. From the side-navigational bar, click Administration Execution Environments.
    3. Click Add.

    4. Enter the appropriate information then click Save to pull in the new image.

       Note

       if your instance of automation hub is password or token protected, ensure that you have the appropriate container registry credential set up.