Automating Ghost CMS + MariaDB with Ansible (the Smart Way)

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, 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:

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db_user: ghostuser
db_pass: ghostpass123
db_name: ghostdb
db_host: 127.0.0.1

restore_url:

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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 ghost user

- 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
  
  

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  for secrets like SMTP credentials.
• Schedule ghost backup via cron + Ansible-managed scripts.
• Ghost upgrades? Just ghost update inside a task + service restart.

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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.

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If you're tired of updating Swagger manually or syncing Postman collections, give it a shot.

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