syncthing

This ansible role handles the installation and configuration of syncthing.

Introduction

I wanted a role to install and configure syncthing for me and did not find an existing one that satisfied me. I had a few mandatory features in mind:

• the ability to configure a servers parameters in only one place to avoid repetition
• having a fact that retrieves the ID of a device
• the validation of host_vars which virtually no role in the wild ever does
• the ability to manage an additional inventory file for devices which ansible cannot manage (like my phone)

Role variables

There is a single variable to specify in the host_vars of your hosts: syncthing. This is a dict that can contain the following keys:

• address: optional string to specify how to connect to the server, must match the format tcp://<hostname> or tcp://<ip>. Default value is dynamic which means a passive host.
• shared: a mandatory dict describing the directories this host shares, which can contain the following keys:
  • name: a mandatory string to name the share in the configuration. It must match on all devices that share this folder.
  • path: the path of the folder on the device. This can difer on each device sharing this data.
  • peers: a list a strings. Each item should be either the ansible_hostname of another device, or a hostname from the syncthing_data.yaml file

Configuring a host through its host_vars looks like this:

syncthing:
  address: tcp://lore.adyxax.org
  shared:
    - name: org-mode
      path: /var/syncthing/org-mode
      peers:
        - hero
        - light
        - lumapps
        - Pixel 3a

The optional syncthing_data.yaml file

To be found by the action_plugins, this file should be in the same folder as your playbook. It shares the same format as the host_vars but with additional keys for the hostname and its ID.

The data file for non ansible devices looks like this:

- name: Pixel 3a
  id: ABCDEFG-HIJKLMN-OPQRSTU-VWXYZ01-2345678-90ABCDE-FGHIJKL-MNOPQRS
  shared:
    - name: Music
      path: /storage/emulated/0/Music
      peers:
        - phoenix
    - name: Photos
      path: /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera
      peers:
        - phoenix
    - name: org-mode
      path: /storage/emulated/0/Org
      peers:
        - lore.adyxax.org

Example playbook

- hosts: all
  roles:
    -  {  role:  syncthing, tags: [ 'syncthing' ], when: "syncthing is defined" }