how to specify user name in host file of ansible

Question

I am using the host file as below,

[qa-workstations]
10.39.19.190 ansible_user=test ansible_ssh_pass=test

I am using below command to execute "whoami" command in host

root@Svr:~/ansible# ansible all -a "whoami" -i /etc/ansible/host
10.39.19.190 | success | rc=0 >>
root

ansible by default trying to use user name in which I have logged in, i.e root instead of test user which I have specified in host file

It works fine when I try to pass the username in ansible cli command

root@Svr:~/ansible# ansible all -a "whoami" -i /etc/ansible/host -u test
10.39.19.190 | success | rc=0 >>
test

But its not possible for me to pass username every time in CLI as different host uses different username. Also I don't have a key pair generated for each host, because host machine keeps changing often

version used:

 ansible 1.5.4 
 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Answer 1

Create an ansible.cfg in your playbook directory or modify the "global" ansible.cfg

Note: Only 1 configuration file is processed. First one wins in the below list. http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_configuration.html

• ANSIBLE_CONFIG (an environment variable)
• ansible.cfg (in the current directory)
• .ansible.cfg (in the home directory)
• /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

[defaults]
remote_user=test

Answer 2

With recent versions of Ansible, you can use the ansible_user parameter in the host definition.

For example, on the host mysql-host.mydomain the user I need to connect with is mysql :

[docker-hosts]
mysql-host.mydomain ansible_user=mysql

But as you are using an older version of ansible, you might need to use ansible_ssh_user instead

http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-handle-different-machines-needing-different-user-accounts-or-ports-to-log-in-with