Container Images for Ansible Molecule

About

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

Two varieties are available, namely:

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

Container Images

These images were developed and tested with Podman. Example code is available in the podman Molecule scenario.

Although a Molecule scenario also exists for Docker containers (see docker), this doesn't cover all images (notably Debian based images), and has not been tested thoroughly.

Containerfiles

Our Containerfiles (in the podman/ directory):

Linux Distribution	Containerfile	Image name
CentOS Stream 8	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
SLE BCI (SLES 15) based	Containerfile.sle15	molecule-platform:sle15
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 https://github.com/alehaa/docker-debian-systemd.

Build Instructions

Container images built from these files are available at https://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:

podman build -f podman/Containerfile.centos-stream8 -t molecule-platform:centos8 .
podman build --pull -f podman/Containerfile.centos-stream9 -t molecule-platform:centos9 .
podman build -f podman/Containerfile.debian12 -t molecule-platform:debian12 .
podman build -f podman/Containerfile.debian13 -t molecule-platform:debian13 .
podman build --pull -f podman/Containerfile.fedora40 -t molecule-platform:fedora40 .
podman build --pull -f podman/Containerfile.fedora41 -t molecule-platform:fedora41 .
podman build --pull -f podman/Containerfile.fedora42 -t molecule-platform:fedora42 .
podman build -f podman/Containerfile.sle15 -t molecule-platform:sle15 .
podman build -f podman/Containerfile.ubuntu2204 -t molecule-platform:ubuntu2204 .
podman build -f podman/Containerfile.ubuntu2404 -t molecule-platform:ubuntu2404 .

Additional Images

Other images that already contain systemd:

• registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi-init:9.6
• registry.access.redhat.com/ubi10/ubi-init:10.0
• quay.io/centos/centos:stream10

Molecule Example

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

Run with:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install molecule 'ansible-core<2.17'
molecule test -s podman

KubeVirt containerDisk Images

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

Containerfiles

Our Containerfiles (in the kubevirt/ directory):

Build Instructions

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

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

make build-vm

Additional Images

Other available images (requires authentication to pull):

• registry.redhat.io/rhel9/rhel-guest-image
• registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rhel-guest-image

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<2.17'
python3 -m pip install -r molecule/shared/kubevirt-requirements.txt
molecule test -s kubevirt

License & Disclaimer

The original Debian systemd Dockerfile example, in which some of our images are based, is © 2018-2019 Alexander Haase [email protected].

Modifications, 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.