Ansible keeps wanting to be root

Question

I'm a beginner with Ansible, and I need to run some basic tasks on a remote server.

The procedure is as follows:

I log as some user (osadmin)
I run su - to become root
I then do the tasks I need to.

So, I wrote my playbook as follows:

---
- hosts: qualif
  vars:
    - ansible_user: osadmin
    - ansible_password: H1g2.D6#
  tasks:
    - name: Copy stuff from here to over there
      copy:
       src: /home/osadmin/file.txt
       dest: /home/osadmin/file-changed.txt
       owner: osadmin
       group: osadmin
       mode: 0777

Also, I have the following in vars/main.yml:

ansible_user: osadmin
ansible_password: password1
ansible_become_password: password2
[ some other values ]

However, when running my tasks, Ansible / the hosts returns me the following:

"Incorrect sudo password"

I then changed my tasks so that instead of becoming sudo and copy the file in some place my osadmin doesn't have access, I just copy the file on /home/osadmin. So, theorically, no need to become sudo for just a simple copy. The problem now is that not only it keeps saying "wrong sudo password", but if I remove it, Ansible asks for it.

I then decided to run the command and added -vvv at the end, and it showed me the following:

ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: osadmin

SSH: EXEC sshpass -d10 ssh -C -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o User=osadmin -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/home/osadmin/.ansible/cp/b9489e2193 -tt HOST-ADDRESS '/bin/sh -c '"'"'sudo -H -S -n -u

root /bin/sh -c '"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'echo BECOME-SUCCESS-ewujwywrqhcqfdrkaglvrouhmuiefwlj; /usr/bin/python /home/osadmin/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1550076004.1888492-11284794413477/AnsiballZ_setup.py'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"' && sleep 0'"'"''

(1, b'sudo: a password is required\r\n', b'Shared connection to HOST-ADDRESS closed.\r\n')

As you can see, it somehow uses root, while I never told him to.

Does anyone know why Ansible keeps trying to be sudo, and how can I disable this?

Thank you in advance

Check group_vars and host_vars in inventory and playbook directory — Konstantin Suvorov

George Shuklin George Shuklin · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-15T11:32:13

There is a difference between 'su' and 'sudo'. If you have 'su' access, that means, that you can log as root (may be not, but it looks like). Use ansible_ssh_user=root, ansible_password=password2.

If this doesn't work, try to configure sudo on a server. You should be able to run sudo whoami and to get answer root. After that your code should run.

One more thing: you are using 'copy' module incorrectly. It uses src as path on local machine (where ansible is run), and dst as path on remote machine.

Ansible keeps wanting to be root

1 Answers