Ansible Navigator and Execution Environments

In the previous exercise you built a custom webops.apache collection and ran it with ansible-playbook. In this exercise you will learn how Ansible Navigator and Execution Environments (EEs) change that workflow — packaging everything your automation needs into a portable container image and giving you a consistent runtime whether you are running locally or in Automation Controller.

What is ansible-navigator?

ansible-navigator is a text-based user interface (TUI) and command-line tool for developing and running Ansible automation. It extends the ansible-playbook workflow by:

  • Running playbooks inside a containerized Execution Environment

  • Providing an interactive TUI for exploring playbook output, module docs, and EE contents

  • Matching the runtime your Automation Controller uses, so what works locally works in production

What is an Execution Environment?

An Execution Environment is a container image that bundles together:

  • ansible-core

  • Python runtimes and dependencies

  • Ansible collections and their prerequisites

Because everything is packaged in one image, every team member and every controller job uses the identical runtime — no more "works on my machine" issues.

Examining the Execution Environment

Change to your working directory:

cd ~/lab_inventory

Run ansible-navigator images to list the Execution Environments available on your control node:

ansible-navigator images

The EE image will be pulled on first run. This will take a minute — once complete, the TUI will launch automatically.
ansible-navigator images TUI

You will see the rhel_90_ee image listed. Press the number shown next to it to open the EE detail menu.

EE detail menu

From the detail menu, select option 2 — Ansible version and collections — to inspect what is packaged inside the EE:

EE collections list

Here you can see the ansible-core version and every collection bundled into the image, including ansible.posix which your collection depends on.

Press Esc to exit the TUI when you are done exploring.

The output you see may differ slightly from the screenshots above — this reflects the specific EE image built for this lab.

Examining the ansible-navigator Configuration

Your environment includes a pre-configured ~/.ansible-navigator.yml file. View it with:

cat ~/.ansible-navigator.yml
ansible-navigator configuration

Key parameters to note:

  • inventory.entries — points navigator to your lab inventory file, so you do not need to pass -i hosts on the command line

  • execution-environment.image — the container image used for every playbook run

  • execution-environment.container-engine — uses podman to run the EE rootlessly

  • execution-environment.pull.policy: missing — pulls the image only if it is not already present locally

  • volume-mounts — mounts your local collection paths into the EE so the webops.apache collection you built in the previous exercise is available inside the container

Running the Collection Playbook with ansible-navigator

In the previous exercise you ran deploy_apache.yml directly with ansible-playbook. Now run the same playbook through ansible-navigator so it executes inside the EE:

ansible-navigator run deploy_apache.yml -m stdout
ansible-navigator run output

Notice that the playbook output looks identical to what ansible-playbook produces — the difference is that the tasks ran inside the containerized EE rather than directly on the control node.

Verify Apache is Running

After the playbook completes, verify Apache is active on the web servers:

ssh node01 "systemctl status httpd"
When prompted for a password, enter ansible123!

You should see output confirming Apache is running. Confirm the web page is being served:

curl http://node01
curl output

Exploring Module Documentation

One advantage of ansible-navigator is built-in access to module documentation pulled from inside the EE:

ansible-navigator doc ansible.builtin.template -m stdout
ansible-navigator doc ansible.posix.firewalld -m stdout

This ensures the docs you read match the exact collection versions packaged in your EE.

ansible-navigator vs ansible-playbook

Both tools run Ansible playbooks, but they serve different purposes:

ansible-playbook ansible-navigator

Runs directly on the control node

Runs inside a containerized EE

Uses locally installed collections and Python

Uses the versions packaged in the EE image

Standard for ad-hoc and simple workflows

Standard for team and controller-aligned workflows

No built-in TUI or doc browser

Includes TUI, doc browser, and EE inspection

In Automation Controller, all jobs run with Execution Environments by default. Using ansible-navigator locally means your development environment matches production exactly.

Summary

In this exercise you:

  • Learned what Execution Environments are and why they provide a consistent automation runtime

  • Used ansible-navigator images to inspect the EE and view its bundled collections and ansible-core version

  • Examined the ~/.ansible-navigator.yml configuration file and understood its key parameters

  • Ran the deploy_apache.yml collection playbook inside an EE using ansible-navigator

  • Verified that Apache was running and serving the custom web page

  • Explored module documentation directly from the EE using ansible-navigator doc

  • Compared the ansible-playbook and ansible-navigator workflows and when to use each