Automating Ghost CMS + MariaDB with Ansible (the Smart Way)
Hi there! I’m Maneshwar. Right now, I’m building LiveAPI, a first-of-its-kind tool that helps you automatically index API endpoints across all your repositories. LiveAPI makes it easier to discover, understand, and interact with APIs in large infrastructures.
Spinning up a Ghost blog manually is cool until you have to do it three times in a row.
Whether you’re scaling, rebuilding, or just love your infra reproducible, Ansible + Ghost is a match made in automation heaven.
In this post, I’ll walk you through setting up Ghost CMS 5.x on Ubuntu 22.04 using Ansible with:
- MariaDB 10.6 as the database
- Full systemd-based process setup
- Ghost CLI installation
- Email SMTP config
- Sane default user permissions
- And yes — restoring Ghost from a backup
Project Layout
We scaffold our Ansible role using Galaxy:
ansible-galaxy init roles/ghost --offline
Here’s what the final structure looks like:
hex-ansible
├─ ghost.yml
├─ hosts.ini
├─ roles
│ └─ ghost/
│ ├─ tasks/
│ ├─ templates/
│ ├─ vars/
│ ├─ files/
│ └─ ...
Variables: vars/main.yml
All our configurable values in one place:
ghost_user: ghost
node_major: 18
ghost_version: "5.89.3"
cli_version: 1.27.0
ghost_dir: /var/www/ghost
ghost_url: https://journal.hexmos.com
db_user: ghostuser
db_pass: ghostpass123
db_name: ghostdb
db_host: 127.0.0.1
restore_url: https://backup-bucket.example.com/ghost.zip
mail_transport: "SMTP"
mail_from: "'Ghost Journal' ghost@example.com"
mail_host: "smtp.example.com"
mail_port: 2465
mail_secure: true
mail_user: "SMTP_USER"
mail_pass: "SMTP_PASS"
Task Breakdown
1. Install MariaDB (install_mariadb.yml)
This handles:
- Repo + GPG key
- Installing MariaDB 10.6
- Creating the DB and user
- name: Install MariaDB 10.6
apt:
name: mariadb-server
state: present
- name: Create DB and user
shell: |
mysql -u root <<EOF
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS {{ db_name }};
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS '{{ db_user }}'@'{{ db_host }}' IDENTIFIED BY '{{ db_pass }}';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON {{ db_name }}.* TO '{{ db_user }}'@'{{ db_host }}';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EOF
2. Install Ghost & Node.js (install_ghost.yml)
Key steps:
- Add NodeSource repo
- Install Ghost CLI globally
- Allow passwordless sudo for systemd ops
- Install Ghost using the CLI as the
ghostuser
- name: Install Ghost as ghost user
become_user: "{{ ghost_user }}"
shell: |
cd {{ ghost_dir }} &&
ghost install {{ ghost_version }}
--url {{ ghost_url }}
--db mysql
--dbhost {{ db_host }}
--dbuser {{ db_user }}
--dbpass {{ db_pass }}
--dbname {{ db_name }}
--no-setup-nginx
--no-setup-ssl
--process systemd
--start
--no-prompt
args:
chdir: "{{ ghost_dir }}"
creates: "{{ ghost_dir }}/current"
Also, to avoid sudo prompts for ghost:
- name: Allow ghost user passwordless sudo
copy:
dest: /etc/sudoers.d/ghost
content: |
ghost ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /bin/systemctl
ghost ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /bin/systemctl, /bin/mv, /usr/bin/mkdir, /usr/bin/chown
mode: '0440'
validate: 'visudo -cf %s'
3. Restore Ghost Backup (restore_ghost.yml)
Download + extract your backup content:
- name: Download and unarchive ghost backup
unarchive:
src: "{{ restore_url }}"
dest: "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
remote_src: true
Make sure permissions are set correctly:
- name: Fix permissions
file:
path: "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
owner: "{{ ghost_user }}"
group: "{{ ghost_user }}"
recurse: yes
Then drop in the config:
- name: Template config.production.json
template:
src: config.production.json.j2
dest: "{{ ghost_dir }}/config.production.json"
owner: "{{ ghost_user }}"
group: "{{ ghost_user }}"
mode: "0640"
notify: restart ghost
Ghost Config Template (config.production.json.j2)
{
"url": "{{ ghost_url }}",
"database": {
"client": "mysql",
"connection": {
"host": "{{ db_host }}",
"user": "{{ db_user }}",
"password": "{{ db_pass }}",
"database": "{{ db_name }}"
}
},
"mail": {
"transport": "{{ mail_transport }}",
"options": {
"from": {{ mail_from | to_json }},
"host": "{{ mail_host }}",
"port": {{ mail_port }},
"secure": {{ mail_secure | to_json }},
"auth": {
"user": "{{ mail_user }}",
"pass": "{{ mail_pass }}"
}
}
},
"process": "systemd",
"paths": {
"contentPath": "{{ ghost_dir }}/content"
}
}
Handler (handlers/main.yml)
- name: restart ghost
command: ghost restart
args:
chdir: "{{ ghost_dir }}"
become: true
become_user: "{{ ghost_user }}"
Running the Playbook
Create a simple hosts.ini:
[ghost]
your.server.ip ansible_user=ubuntu
Then trigger it:
ansible-playbook -i hosts.ini ghost.yml
Summary
This setup gives you:
- A clean MariaDB + Ghost CMS stack on any Ubuntu box
- Automated Ghost install using CLI with systemd
- SMTP-ready configuration
- Backup restore support
- No sudo prompts ever again for systemctl
🔁 Want to scale this with nginx, SSL (Certbot), or Cloudflare? Plug those in as separate roles.
Pro Tips
- Use Ansible Vault for secrets like SMTP credentials.
- Schedule
ghost backupvia cron + Ansible-managed scripts. - Ghost upgrades? Just
ghost updateinside a task + service restart.
LiveAPI helps you get all your backend APIs documented in a few minutes.
With LiveAPI, you can generate interactive API docs that allow users to search and execute endpoints directly from the browser.
If you’re tired of updating Swagger manually or syncing Postman collections, give it a shot.
