One release chasing the other.
Announcing the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.2.0!
Apart to some housekeeping, here are the relevant changes:
@r.sander detected an issue with permissions during MKP management of the server role. This is fixed now. Thanks for finding it!
The file management of the agent role was re-aligned. Historically Windows and Linux diverged, but now they are in unison again. If you experience any issues with the agent role on Windows, do let us know.
Lastly, an internal use case revealed an oversight in both the agent and the server role: They did not clean up the downloaded setup files. While it might be convenient from time to time to have the setup still around, on long-running servers (or those who disabled the cleanup of /tmp during boot, or changed the location of the temporary files) this could become an issue. Now the files are automatically cleaned up after each run of the respective role. Let us know, if you think, this is a bad idea, preferably as an issue on GitHub, then we can discuss there.
As you can tell, this is a bug fix release. However, the changes are notable:
The server role now properly handles editions during site management.
By default, you specify a version and an edition of Checkmk to install and site management would use this version and edition to manage your sites. While that is convenient, you might want to manage a site with a different version (which was always possible), but the edition was hard-coded to always be the default edition.
While you can still only specify one version and edition for installing Checkmk (which makes sense to us), you can now properly manage all kinds of combinations of version and edition.
Our own @lars.getwan fixed a few deprecations and bugs that would affect upcoming releases of both Checkmk and Ansible. Thanks, buddy!
Apart from these, there were some build-related changes and clean-ups as always.
And another bug fix release, folks.
The Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.2.2.
There were minor bugs in the server role’s MKP and edition management.
Apart from that, we updated the collection’s dependencies to include the ansible.windows collection and bumped versions constraints on the other dependencies. This should have no impact at all on you, it merely is housekeeping.
Other changes were purely internal housekeeping and improvements to the CI.
But rest assured, we are already working on presents for the holiday season.
So do not be discouraged by the rather small releases the past weeks, we got some pretty cool stuff cooking.
It’s been more than a month and there are still some beefy changes in the pipeline for the collection. But today, we just ship a housekeeping release, bumping build-related dependencies, updating ansible-core versions and requirements and fixing a couple bugs.
The most notable changes are:
@r.sander found an issue with truthy values, which we could clean up throughout the code base. Thanks, mate!
@sekania found a bug with the rule module: The module actually supports check mode, but the feature flag was set to false. @lgetwan checked and fixed this. Thanks!
We bumped the minimum ansible-core version to 2.17 while we bumped the collection internal default version to 2.19. The latter one is only relevant for development and testing. The former version constraint does not mean, that one cannot use the collection with older Ansible versions. However, we only test as far back as ansible-core 2.17 and more importantly: You should not use ancient Ansible versions, but stay as up-to-date as possible in your environment.
And with that, I give you the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.2.3:
It is not yet the holiday season, but are already getting started with presents.
Announcing the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.3.0.
Before diving into some smaller notable changes, I want to highlight one set of changes especially.
The story began at this year’s Checkmk Conference 11, where a person approached me very politely and soon said, that they have code, which might be of interest for the Collection. Not only that, they actually handed me the code (not hacker style on a thumb drive though) and said it is a donation, which we could use as we saw fit. I was stunned by the gesture and when I dove into the contents of what I was handed, I understand the significance of this donation.
Now, months later, we finally got through the code, restructured and integrated it into the Collection and took one module they handed us and adapted it to the aforementioned changes.
Why am I sharing this? Because I want to give a huge shout-out “Thank you!” to the Atruvia AG. They created cool functionality, but instead of going through the process of creating pull requests, they gave the code to us so we could it as we saw fit. So I want to make sure to give them proper attribution and my heart-felt thank you!
With that said, here are the pull requests we created on their behalf (namely @lgetwan did the heavy lifting):
All modules now support two more modes of authentication. In addition to bearer, you can now use both basic and cookie authentication.
Differences in the desired and current state are currently computed in each module separately. There now is a ConfigDiffer class, which can be used for this moving forward.
Finally the DCD module was added, providing management of dynamic host configuration connections.
Thanks again!
Now on to the smaller, but certainly not less relevant changes:
phiv0 added support for downloading the Checkmk setup files and GPG through a proxy server. Thanks pal!
@lgetwan not only integrated the aforementioned code donation, but also fixed several bugs with this release. Way to go, buddy!
Although this release already is packed, rest assured we still got some more presents in the ol’ bag.
And with that I give you the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.3.0:
There was one bad apple along the presents from 6.3.0: The inventory plugin broke, due to a lapse in our CI validation.
nick-pike bet us to the punch fixing the issue himself, right after reporting it. Thanks a bunch!
We are also looking into fixing the CI issue, as we have an understanding of it already. It will be fixed in the background, as we want to make sure to ship the fix as soon as possible.
So this 6.3.1 release really just fixes this bug, among some minor and cosmetic changes.
Look at our pace! One release chasing another.
Announcing the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.4.0.
This one comes with two cool new features and one important bug fix:
Delegation support for downloading the Checkmk server setup and GPG key was already prepared by phiv0 but did not make the 6.3.0 release. But now it was merged and released. Thanks again!
Support for Debian 13 and RedHat 10 was in the making for quite a while now and has finally landed. The agent role already supported them, but now we test this explicitly. The server role had to wait for Checkmk 2.4.0p16, which is the first version, which has setups for the new operating systems.
An issue with a faulty variable inthe agent role in 6.3.1 was detected by mueller-ma and fixed.
Just a quick “bug fix” release: rrinco found a lacking variable subvalue, which blocked proper Oracle Linux support. And they did not only find the issue, they also fixed it! Thanks!
That’s it. No bells and whistles in this release (although tis almost the season).
And we are starting off with the Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.5.0.
This release features among build-related updates three mentionable changes:
nicoske added a module to manage aux_tags in Checkmk. Way to go!
@lgetwan fixed an issue with ‘read-only’ site connection in the site module.
We bumped the minimum ansible-core version to 2.18 while we bumped the collection internal default version to 2.20. The latter one is only relevant for development and testing. The former version constraint does not mean, that one cannot use the collection with older Ansible versions. However, we only test as far back as ansible-core 2.18 and more importantly: You should not use ancient Ansible versions, but stay as up-to-date as possible in your environment.
Whatever you celebrate this time of year, if you celebrate anything at all, here is a reason for at least a small celebration: The Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.6.0.
The most notable changes in this little present:
Our @lars.getwan has been cooking the ldap for quite a while now and with this release, we finally make it public. Thanks a lot for your continuous efforts in improving the collection buddy!
Thanks to our very own Knowledge Team here at Checkmk (the folks building https://docs.checkmk.com for you all), the READMEs of the project got a thorough review and where improved where necessary. Thanks to them as well!
And finally, we moved from the deprecated ansible_-style variables to the new ansible_facts['foo']-style. This should bring no functional changes, but is in line with Ansible Best Practice.
Thank you all for an amazing year, not only, but especially with the Checkmk Ansible Collection! It has been a blast, and I am still amazed, how well-received the collection is and how awesome you all are as a community. Thank you again, be safe and see you on the other side!
This message was supposed to be posted two days ago, but apparently clicking a button becomes hard late at night.
And just a week later, we got another small release: 6.7.0.
As you can tell from the version number, this is not just a bug fix, but a feature release.
And this feature comes thanks to GitHub user davidclemens, who requested support for client certificates.
And while this is neither a Collection nor a Checkmk feature, but basic Ansible and web server functionality, we lacked the code to enable it. With this release we unlock using client certificates, just like with any other Ansible module.
Please refer to the Ansible documentation on how to use client certificates.
P.S.: A quick heads-up: The next release will be 7.0.0. Again, the version number reveals the nature of the release: It is a breaking release. We decided to do some important housekeeping, but that cannot be done without breaking stuff. You can check out this PR for a sneak peek. TL;DR: The variables automation_user and automation_secret become api_user and api_secret respectively. This means you will need to adapt your configuration. Of course this release will be announced here in all detail, when it becomes available. Just make sure, you pin your collection versions, to not accidentally update.
And with that I give you: The Checkmk Ansible Collection 6.7.0:
The gist is rather simple and can be taken from the release notes: We renamed the authentication variables automation_user to api_user and automation_secret to api_secret. Environment and configuration variables were renamed accordingly, in case you used them to specify secrets or because you preferred them in your ini-style configuration files.
We even retained the now-old names as aliases for now. So this should actually not break your workflows, but I strongly advice you to update your configuration sooner rather than later. We will remove the aliases at some point in the future, latest with 8.0.0.
The rationale behind these changes is simple: The naming of the aforementioned variables goes way back to the beginnings of the collection. Back then I did not give too much thought to the names. But over the years we saw confusion time and again. We ultimately realized, that at some point we should update the naming and this is now. We opted for the api_ prefix (which you could already see for other newly introduced variables), as that is most appropriate: We do not care which kind of user it is, but it is the one talking to the Checkmk REST API. We hope you find this renaming as logical as we do and I hope it does not cause you too much headaches.
P.S.: We also finally removed long deprecated environment and Ansible variables. Refer to the release notes for details.
I hope the last release did not break anything or at least not much on your end.
At least we did not receive any bug reports yet, so this bug fix release actually fixes another issue, which you could not even experience yet, as it would have affected the upcoming Checkmk 2.5.0.
So while this release features a ton of changes to our CI (which obviously does not affect you at all), there are only two notable changes for y’all:
The user module now sets password as the default value for the auth_type parameter. Before you could omit the parameter which would work in some cases but cause an error in others. With this change, there should be no surprises.
The user was made ready for Checkmk 2.5.0, namely the module option mega_menu_icons is now main_menu_icons. This changed in the API, so we aligned the module. For convenience, both the API and the module still allow the old name, but we encourage you to use the new name, as soon as you start using Checkmk 2.5.0.
And that’s it. Enjoy the Ansible Collection 7.0.1:
This release actually brings a pretty neat treat for all the chameleon fans: Experimental Suse support for the server role!
To be specific: We implemented support using openSUSE Leap 15.6 for testing. A huge shout-out thank you to @Glowsome, who then took this new feature for a ride on SLES 15 SP6 and found a few bugs and some things to note. But first: We truly appreciate your support buddy!
On to the technical details:
Suse support is tested against openSUSE Leap 15. Expect things to not work entirely smoothly on SLES. If you find any issues, please file an issue over at GitHub.
On SLES you need to ensure some prerequisites, which we can not ensure automatically. Refer to the role README for details.
By the way: The agent role already worked on Suse derivates for years, although we did not explicitly test this. The testing is now also active for Checkmk 2.4.0 and later.
That’s it. We hope you enjoy this feature!
If you have any feedback about it, feel free to share it in the dedicated thread here in the forum or over at GitHub.
Keeping up the pace, I present to you the Checkmk Ansible Collection 7.2.1!
This release features one notable change, next to some CI cleanups in the background:
We build lookup modules for activations, based on the work of @MasopustC.
Thanks a lot for the initial work buddy, we appreciate it!
An that is already it for today. Some releases are just more down to earth than others.
But rest assured, there is still more to come.
P.S.: For those paying a lot of attention: Yes, this should have been a 7.2.0 release, but I messed up in the release process and for reasons, I needed to bump the version. I got not better excuse than: It was late.
And with that I give you: The Checkmk Ansible Collection 7.2.1:
If you experience any issues with the 
Let us know, if you think, this is a bad idea, preferably as an issue on GitHub, then we can discuss there. 
However, the changes are notable:
But today, we just ship a housekeeping release, bumping build-related dependencies, updating 
One release chasing another. 
The 
