How to Install Ansible on Alpine Linux

Here is how to install Ansible on Alpine Linux in 2026.

Install from Repository

sudo apk update
sudo apk add ansible

Verify

ansible --version
ansible-playbook --version
ansible-galaxy --version

Alternative: pip in Virtual Environment

Alpine uses musl libc which can cause issues with some Python packages:

sudo apk add python3 py3-pip py3-virtualenv gcc musl-dev python3-dev libffi-dev openssl-dev
python3 -m venv ~/ansible-venv
source ~/ansible-venv/bin/activate
pip install ansible

Post-Installation

mkdir -p ~/.ansible
ansible localhost -m ping
ansible-galaxy collection install community.general ansible.posix

Alpine Docker Container

FROM alpine:3.20
RUN apk add --no-cache ansible openssh-client
WORKDIR /ansible
ENTRYPOINT ["ansible-playbook"]

Related Resources

• Ansible Cheat Sheet
• Install Ansible via pip