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Journal — 2026-05-17-ansible-sepia-audit

Summary

Ansible vs. live system audit for sepia. 5 discrepancies found: stale fstab (post bookworm → trixie upgrade), missing man package, absent root cronjobs + btrfs-snap script, stale ser2net device ID, and missing LC_ALL locale entry.

Context

After the earlier Hermes cleanup, the question arose whether the Ansible playbooks in /ansible/sepia/ still match the actual system configuration. This is a systematic audit of all 8 playbooks: packages, fstab, network, users, services, cron, systemd, ser2net.

See also: JOURNAL/2026-05-17-hermes-cleanup.md

Audit results

No changes made — inventory only.

Finding 1: /etc/fstab out of date

  • File: /etc/fstab
  • What: The # BEGIN ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK contains stale UUIDs and an outdated root LV. The system was (presumably) upgraded from bookworm to trixie, moving / to /dev/mapper/sepia--vg-trixie--lv instead of sepia--vg-root. /boot also changed from ext2 (UUID) to ext4 on /dev/sdb2. The Ansible block has the old values commented out.

Finding 2: Package man missing

  • What: Listed in extra_packages in install_software.yml but not installed.
  • Commands: bash dpkg -l man 2>/dev/null | grep ^ii || echo "missing"

Finding 3: Root cronjobs + btrfs-snap script absent

  • Files: /root/scripts/btrfs-snap (does not exist), /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root (empty)
  • What: setup_crontab.yml defines 7 root cronjobs for btrfs snapshots and permissions. None are active. The referenced script /root/scripts/btrfs-snap does not exist on disk.

Finding 4: ser2net device ID changed

  • File: /etc/ser2net.yaml
  • What: Ansible has FTDI_DCSD_USB_UART_AU01TVU4, system has FTDI_FT232R_USB_UART_ABAWD44U. Different FTDI serial converter — likely a hardware swap.

Finding 5: Locale missing LC_ALL

  • File: /etc/default/locale
  • What: Ansible sets both LANG and LC_ALL, system only has LANG (generated by update-locale).

Decisions

  • No automatic corrections applied — Ansible playbooks should be updated to the trixie state first before re-running them.
  • ser2net device ID change is likely a hardware replacement, not a config error.

Issues Encountered

  • Terminal had a broken cd in the default working directory — had to pass workdir=/ explicitly.

Next Steps

  • [ ] Update Ansible fstab block to current trixie config
  • [ ] apt install man
  • [ ] Create btrfs-snap script in /root/scripts/ and restore root cronjobs
  • [ ] Update ser2net.yaml device ID
  • [ ] Add LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 to /etc/default/locale

Generated: 2026-05-17