How To Install reclass on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install reclass on Ubuntu 18.04.
What is reclass
reclass is:
reclass is an “external node classifier” (ENC) as can be used with automation tools, such as Puppet, Salt, and Ansible. It is also a stand-alone tool for merging data sources recursively.
The purpose of an ENC is to allow a system administrator to maintain an inventory of nodes to be managed, completely separately from the configuration of the automation tool. Usually, the external node classifier completely replaces the tool-specific inventory (such as site.pp for Puppet, ext_pillar/master_tops for Salt, or /etc/ansible/hosts).
reclass allows you to define your nodes through class inheritance, while always able to override details further up the tree (i.e. in more specific nodes). Think of classes as feature sets, as commonalities between nodes, or as tags. Add to that the ability to nest classes (multiple inheritance is allowed, well-defined, and encouraged), and piece together your infrastructure from smaller bits, eliminating redundancy and exposing all important parameters to a single location, logically organised.
This package provides the reclass CLI and adapters for Salt and Ansible.
There are three methods to install reclass on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install reclass Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install reclass using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install reclass
Install reclass Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install reclass using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install reclass
Install reclass Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install reclass using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install reclass
How To Uninstall reclass on Ubuntu 18.04
To uninstall only the reclass package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove reclass
Uninstall reclass And Its Dependencies
To uninstall reclass and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove reclass
Remove reclass Configurations and Data
To remove reclass configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge reclass
Remove reclass configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove reclass configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge reclass
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install reclass package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
