Container Images for Ansible Molecule

About

Molecule is a testing framework for the Ansible IT automation system, designed for developing and testing Ansible collections, playbooks, and roles.

This code builds container images for various Linux distributions, for use as Ansible molecule testing platforms.

Images for two testing scenarios are available, namely:

• Container images, for testing your playbooks in Podman or Docker containers
• containerDisk images, for testing your playbooks in KubeVirt VMs

Container Images

For many Ansible playbooks, one of the easiest ways to test them against different Linux distributions & versions is in containers.

One limitation of most Linux base container images is that they are created primarily for running a single application, and therefore do not have any init. In contrast, many playbooks, likely written for VMs, assume the presense of systemd. This is addressed by the images in this repository, by simply adding systemd to the base images.

Platforms With Existing Images

The following images already contain systemd, and can be used as is:

• Red Hat Universal Base Image 8: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-init:8.10
• Red Hat Universal Base Image 9: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi-init:9.7
• Red Hat Universal Base Image 10: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi10/ubi-init:10.1
• CentOS Stream 10: quay.io/centos/centos:stream10

Our Custom Images

Our Containerfiles (in the podman/ directory):

Linux Distribution	Containerfile	Image name
CentOS Stream 8 (EOL as of 2024-05-31)	Containerfile.centos-stream8	molecule-platform:centos8
CentOS Stream 9	Containerfile.centos-stream9	molecule-platform:centos9
Debian 12 (Bookworm)	Containerfile.debian12	molecule-platform:debian12
Debian 13 (Trixie)	Containerfile.debian13	molecule-platform:debian13
Fedora 40	Containerfile.fedora40	molecule-platform:fedora40
Fedora 41	Containerfile.fedora41	molecule-platform:fedora41
Fedora 42	Containerfile.fedora42	molecule-platform:fedora42
Fedora 43	Containerfile.fedora43	molecule-platform:fedora43
SLE BCI (SLES 15) based	Containerfile.sle15	molecule-platform:sle15
SLE BCI (SLES 16) based	Containerfile.sle16	molecule-platform:sle16
Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish)	Containerfile.ubuntu2204	molecule-platform:ubuntu2204
Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat)	Containerfile.ubuntu2404	molecule-platform:ubuntu2404

Our Debian & Ubuntu images are based on Containerfile.example-debian, from github.com/alehaa/docker-debian-systemd.

Build Instructions

Container images built from these files are available at ghcr.io/clifford2/molecule-platform.

To build your own images from this source, you can build all images with:

make build-container

Or build individual images with these commands:

make CTPLATFORMS=centos8 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=centos9 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=debian12 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=debian13 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=fedora40 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=fedora41 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=fedora42 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=fedora43 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=sle15 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=sle16 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=ubuntu2204 build-container
make CTPLATFORMS=ubuntu2404 build-container

Molecule Example

Podman

These images were developed and tested primarily for use with Podman.

An example Molecule scenario can be found in molecule/podman/. Run it with these commands:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install molecule 'ansible-core>=2.16,<2.17'
ansible-galaxy install -r molecule/podman/collections.yml
python3 -m pip install -r molecule/docker/requirements.txt
molecule test -s podman

Please note the use of Ansible 2.16 here. This is because Newer versions of Ansible don't work with RHEL 8, particularly for DNF package tasks. It is also worth noting that Red Hat use Ansible 2.16 in the Ansible Automation Platform (as of version 2.6, released in 2025).

More recent Ansible versions work for all other images though. Our most recent tests were performed on 2025-01-17, using python 3.12, ansible-core 2.20.1 and molecule 25.4.0.

Docker

An exampl Molecule scenario also exists for Docker containers, in docker. This currently works for all images except for Debian based images (where there is an unresolved cgroup permission problem). Run it with these commands:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install molecule 'ansible-core>=2.16,<2.17'
python3 -m pip install -r molecule/docker/requirements.txt
ansible-galaxy install -r molecule/docker/collections.yml
molecule test -s docker

KubeVirt containerDisk Images

For some Ansible playbooks, testing in a container isn't possible. Examples include time sync and auditd.

For such playbooks, we can test in a VM, and one way to do that is inside Kubernetes, with KubeVirt.

KubeVirt uses containerDisk images, which store and distribute VM disks in the container image registry.

Platforms With Existing Images

As of 2026-01, Containerdisks are readily available elsewhere, and are usually more up to date than the ones in this repository. Available images include:

• KubeVirt curated Containerdisks. As of 2026-01, available images include:
  • CentOS Stream 9 & 10
  • Fedora 39 - 43
  • Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, 25.04
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  • OpenSUSE Leap 15.6
  • [Debian]https://quay.io/repository/containerdisks/debian) 11 - 13
• RHEL 9: registry.redhat.io/rhel9/rhel-guest-image (requires authentication to pull)
• RHEL 10: registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rhel-guest-image (requires authentication to pull)

Our Containerfiles

Our Containerfiles (in the kubevirt/ directory):

Linux Distribution	Containerfile	Image name
CentOS Stream 9	Containerfile.centos-stream9	kubevirt-containerdisk:centos9
CentOS Stream 10	Containerfile.centos-stream10	kubevirt-containerdisk:centos9
Debian 12 (Bookworm)	Containerfile.debian12	kubevirt-containerdisk:debian12
Debian 13 (Trixie)	Containerfile.debian13	kubevirt-containerdisk:debian13
openSUSE Leap 15.6	Containerfile.opensuse-15.6	kubevirt-containerdisk:opensuse-15.6
Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat)	Containerfile.ubuntu2404	kubevirt-containerdisk:ubuntu2404

Build Instructions

Container images built from these files are available at ghcr.io/clifford2/kubevirt-containerdisk.

To build your own images from this source, you can build all images with:

make build-vm

Molecule Example

An example Molecule configuration can be found in molecule/kubevirt/.

Run with:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install molecule 'ansible-core>=2.16,<2.17'
python3 -m pip install -r molecule/kubevirt/requirements.txt
ansible-galaxy install -r molecule/kubevirt/collections.yml
molecule test -s kubevirt

License & Disclaimer

Our Debian & Ubuntu Containerfiles are based on https://github.com/alehaa/docker-debian-systemd/blob/master/Dockerfile, which is © 2018-2019 Alexander Haase ahaase@alexhaase.de.

Modifications based on that file, and all other files, are © 2025 Clifford Weinmann https://www.cliffordweinmann.com/.

This code is provided AS IS, without warranty of any kind. See LICENSES/ for the full license text and disclaimers.

Security

This code is updated as often as possible, but support is provided on a best effort basis only.

Please report any problems or vulnerabilities by opening a GitHub issue here.