Getting rsync in Ansible to work with Vagrant

Question

I want to test an Ansible script using Vagrant. Everything works fine until it tries to do a rsync to the remote host:

- name: Install custom dev user settings
  local_action: command rsync -ave ssh roles/common/files/home/{{ item.name }} 
      {{ ansible_ssh_user }}@{{ inventory_hostname }}:/#home/
  with_items: dev_users
  when: "{{ item.custom }} == True"
  tags:
  - dev_custom
  - dev_users
  - users

However it fails at this point - it seems to be trying to login via password but I don't know why as it should connect to Vagrant via SSH, right (I have elided some information below with ... because it mentioned keys) ?

127.0.0.1> EXEC ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'mkdir -p $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316 && chmod a+rx $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316 && echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316']
<127.0.0.1> REMOTE_MODULE command rsync -ave ssh roles/common/files/home/someUser [email protected]:/#home/
<127.0.0.1> PUT /tmp/tmpm3BnEW TO /home/mark/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316/command
<127.0.0.1> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'sudo -k && sudo -H -S -p "[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: " -u root /bin/sh -c '"'"'echo SUDO-SUCCESS-...; /usr/bin/python /home/mark/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316/command; rm -rf /home/mark/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1393178896.64-215542007508316/ >/dev/null 2>&1'"'"''
failed: [10.0.0.10] => (item={ ... }) => {"failed": true, "item": { ... }, "parsed": false}
invalid output was: [sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
[sudo via ansible, key=...] password: 
Sorry, try again.
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

Any idea how to get around this?

I do deploy a custom key to the box via ansible before I do this e.g.:

- name: Place ansible authorized key
  authorized_key: user=root key="{{ lookup('file', 'root/.ssh/ansible_key.pub') }}"
  tags:
  - root

Answer 1

I finally discovered how to fix this problem. I knew it wasn't rsync because I tested it at the command line:

rsync -ave ssh home/dataToSync [email protected]:/home/

and that worked fine. I had uploaded a key to the Vagrant box I didn't even have to log in. However the calling rsync from ansible was failing. I tried specifying a password as Leucos suggested but that didn't work. I thought about it and wondered if the problem was Ansible was trying to sudo on my local box. To see if that was the problem, I added

sudo: False

to my action and it fixed the problem.

Answer 2

Since Vagrant runs Ansible playbooks as the user vagrant, trying to rsync to root-owned directories will usually fail. Rather than monkeying around with assigning groups or trying to find some magically idempotent chmod/chown solution, the most robust solution I've found is just to tell Ansible to use rsync with sudo.

- synchronize: 
    src=/local/site/
    dest=/var/www/site
    rsync_path='sudo rsync'

Note, Ansible's synchronize module wraps rsync, making these tasks much cleaner to author.

Answer 3

Mark,

If you did not deploy your ssh public key to the box (in /home/vagrant/ssh/authorized_keys), it's quite a normal behavior to get asked for a password. Using 'vagrant' with standard boxes should work.

If you push your key first, it would be easier to get things done after. You can find a Vagrant oriented example here

It seems you set ansible_ssh_user properly, but make sure you also invoke your playbook with --ask-pass --sudo.

As a side note, the line:

when: "{{ item.custom }} == True"

could be rewritten as:

when: item.custom

Answer 4

In Ansible 2.2.1.0 this worked for me:

- synchronize:
    mode: pull
    src: "/home/vagrant/dir1"
    dest: "/my_linux/dir1"
    recursive: yes
    delete: no
    times: yes

...and with this inventory (to use ansible_ssh_private_key_file var):

[vagrant1]
192.168.77.4

[vagrant1:vars]
ansible_user=vagrant
ansible_ssh_private_key_file="/Users/Chilcano/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key"

Hope it helps you.