Ansible: Nginx w/ GeoIP2

I’ve been struggling on how to load balance using user location. Yes, you can easily do this using AWS Route 53 or another cloud load balancer. But this way is expensive. Nginx Plus can do it out of the box, but the Open Source version cannot.

Hank Cheah has an amazing tutorial on how to compile Nginx with GeoIp2 from MaxMind! It works great and is simple to follow. Took me about an hour to get it up and running by hand.

But I think I can improve it slightly, with Ansible! Here’s my playbook:

Shell

—
– name: Compile Nginx with GeoIP2 Module
  hosts: your_server
  become: yes
  vars:
    nginx_version: "1.18.0"  # Replace with the version you want to install
    geoip_conf_path: "/local/path/to/conf" # Download from Maxmind Account area

  tasks:
    – name: Install dependencies
      apt:
        name:
          – libmaxminddb0
          – libmaxminddb-dev
          – mmdb-bin
          – geoipupdate
          – gcc
          – libssl-dev
          – libpcre3
          – libpcre3-dev
          – zlib1g-dev
          – libxslt-dev
          – libgd-dev
          – make
        state: present
        update_cache: yes

    – name: Copy GeoIP configuration file
      copy:
        src: "{{ geoip_conf_path }}"
        dest: /etc/GeoIP.conf
        owner: root
        group: root
        mode: '0644'


    – name: Install Nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present

    – name: Create a directory for nginx compilation
      file:
        path: /tmp/nginx-compile
        state: directory

    – name: Clone ngx_http_geoip2_module
      git:
        repo: https://github.com/leev/ngx_http_geoip2_module.git
        dest: /tmp/nginx-compile/ngx_http_geoip2_module

    – name: Download Nginx source
      get_url:
        url: "http://nginx.org/download/nginx-{{ nginx_version }}.tar.gz"
        dest: "/tmp/nginx-compile/nginx-{{ nginx_version }}.tar.gz"

    – name: Extract Nginx source
      unarchive:
        src: "/tmp/nginx-compile/nginx-{{ nginx_version }}.tar.gz"
        dest: /tmp/nginx-compile
        creates: "/tmp/nginx-compile/nginx-{{ nginx_version }}"
        extra_opts: ["–strip-components=1"]

    – name: Get current Nginx configuration parameters
      shell: nginx -V 2>&1 | grep 'configure arguments'
      register: nginx_configure_arguments

    – name: Compile Nginx with GeoIP2 module
      command:
        chdir: /tmp/nginx-compile/nginx-{{ nginx_version }}
        cmd: "./configure {{ nginx_configure_arguments.stdout_lines[0].split(':', 1)[1].strip() }} –add-dynamic-module=../ngx_http_geoip2_module && make && make install"


    – name: Create module configuration for Nginx
      copy:
        content: "load_module modules/ngx_http_geoip2_module.so;"
        dest: /usr/share/nginx/modules-available/mod-http-geoip2.conf

    – name: Enable the GeoIP2 module
      file:
        src: /usr/share/nginx/modules-available/mod-http-geoip2.conf
        dest: /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/mod-http-geoip2.conf
        state: link

    – name: Test Nginx configuration
      command: nginx -t

    – name: Reload Nginx
      systemd:
        name: nginx
        state: reloaded

Don’t forget to change the variables at the top. This will do all the steps for you in about 5 minutes and you’ll be up and running.