Ansible Configuration

Document Control

TODO:

  • Overall structure.
  • Initial draft complete
  • Testing
  • Ready

Ansible will search for a configuration, in order at:

  • ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable
  • ./ansible.cfg in the current directory
  • ~/.ansible.cfg in the home directory
  • /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

Placing a ansible.cfg in your project directory makes it easy to include in your version control system.

Generally, it's best to avoid using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg or any files owned by root.

Example ansible.cfg

See Configuring Ansible for more information.

ansible.cfg

Plase a file called ansible.cfg in your playbook directory. Example:

[defaults]
strategy                = free
roles_path              = ~/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles:./roles.wip
internal_poll_interval  = 0.001

# Facts gathering and caching
gathering               = smart
gather_subset           = all
gather_timeout          = 10
fact_caching_timeout    = 86400
fact_caching            = jsonfile
fact_caching_connection = /tmp/ansible_facts_cache.json

# Callback and logging
stdout_callback         = debug
nocows                  = 1
log_path                = /tmp/ansible.log
display_skipped_hosts   = no
display_args_to_stdout  = False
deprecation_warnings    = True
callback_whitelist      = profile_tasks,profile_roles,yaml,debug

# Inventory and connectivity
inventory               = ./inventory
inventory_ignore_extensions = ~, .orig, .bak, .ini, .cfg, .retry, .pyc, .pyo
forks                   = 20
ansible_python_interpreter = /usr/bin/python3
remote_user             = devops

# Inventory plugins
[inventory]
enable_plugins          = host_list, script, auto, yaml, ini, toml

# Sudo
[privilege_escalation]
become                  = false
become_method           = sudo
become_user             = root
become_ask_pass         = false

# SSH Connection
[ssh_connection]
pipelining              = true
ssh_args                = -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey
#ssh_args                = -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey

[diff]
always = yes
context = 3

Environmental configuration

Ansible can also be configured using environment variables. These can be handy when dealing with CI/CD systems.

See Ansible Configuration Settings for a list of variables.

You cause the ansible-config utility to inspect your configuration.

Last update: 2020-01-19