Deploying Rundeck the Right Way
An opinionated guide + Ansible automation for Rocky Linux. The official docs get you to "installed." This gets you to "production-ready."
What You'll Have at the End
A production-ready Rundeck instance on Rocky Linux 9
MariaDB as the persistent database backend (not H2)
Apache reverse proxy with SSL termination on port 443
Ansible installed and integrated — your existing inventory imported as Rundeck nodes, playbooks executable from the web UI
SSH key-based authentication from Rundeck to your managed hosts, with scoped sudo
SELinux enforcing — configured correctly, not disabled
JVM tuned so Rundeck doesn't fall over under load
6 Ansible roles that deploy and configure all of the above in ~10 minutes
What's Inside
Written Guide (~50 pages, PDF + Markdown): Why This Guide Exists, Architecture & Prerequisites, MariaDB Setup, Rundeck Installation & Configuration, Ansible Integration, Making It Real (rolling restart example), Troubleshooting & Gotchas (the 8 problems that cost you hours), Quick Reference Appendix.
Ansible Playbook Bundle (zip): site.yml (full deployment), node-setup.yml (managed node prep), verify.yml (10 automated health checks), smoke-test.yml (deep functional tests), 6 roles, all config in one file (group_vars/all.yml). Idempotent and re-runnable. SELinux stays enforcing throughout.
Tested on Rocky Linux 9.x with Rundeck 5.x, MariaDB 10.5, Java 11, Ansible 2.14+.
Bundle Includes
Here are all the products that are included in your bundle