Passing variables to ansible roles

Question

I have my directory structure as this

└── digitalocean     ├── README.md     ├── play.yml     └── roles         ├── bootstrap_server         │   └── tasks         │       └── main.yml         ├── create_new_user         │   └── tasks         │       └── main.yml         ├── update         │   └── tasks         │       └── main.yml         └── vimserver             ├── files             │   └── vimrc_server             └── tasks                 └── main.yml 

When I am creating a user under the role create_new_user, I was hard coding the user name as

--- - name: Creating a user named username on the specified web server.   user:      name: username     state: present     shell: /bin/bash     groups: admin     generate_ssh_key: yes     ssh_key_bits: 2048     ssh_key_file: .ssh/id_rsa  - name: Copy .ssh/id_rsa from host box to the remote box for user username   become: true   copy:      src: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub     dest: /home/usernmame/.ssh/authorized_keys     mode: 0600     owner: username     group: username 

One way of solving this may be to create a var/main.yml and put the username there. But I wanted something through which I can specify the username at play.yml level. As I am also using the username in the role vimrcserver.

I am calling the roles using play.yml

--- - hosts: testdroplets   roles:     - update     - bootstrap_server     - create_new_user     - vimserver 

Would a template work here in this case? Couldn't find much from these SO questions

Answer 1

I got it working by doing a

--- - hosts: testdroplets   roles:     - update     - bootstrap_server     - role: create_new_user       username: username     - role: vimserver       username: username 

on play.yml

Although would love to see a different approach then this

Docs: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_roles.html#roles

EDIT

I finally settled with a directory structure like

$ tree . ├── README.md ├── ansible.cfg ├── play.yml └── roles     ├── bootstrap_server     │   └── tasks     │       └── main.yml     ├── create_new_user     │   ├── defaults     │   │   └── main.yml     │   └── tasks     │       └── main.yml     ├── update     │   └── tasks     │       └── main.yml     └── vimserver         ├── defaults         │   └── main.yml         ├── files         │   └── vimrc_server         └── tasks             └── main.yml 

Where I am creating a defaults/main.yml file inside the roles where I need the usage of {{username}}

If someone is interested in the code,

• https://github.com/tasdikrahman/ansible-bootstrap-server

Answer 2

You should be able to put username in a vars entry in play.yml.

Variables can also be split out into separate files.

Here is an example which shows both options:

- hosts: all   vars:     favcolor: blue   vars_files:     - /vars/external_vars.yml    tasks:    - name: this is just a placeholder     command: /bin/echo foo 

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_variables.html#variable-file-separation

Ansible seems to delight in having different ways to do the same thing, without having either a nice comprehensive reference, or a rationale discussing the full implications of each different approach :). If you didn't remember the above was possible (I'd completely forgotten vars_files), the easiest option to find from the documentation might have been a third way, which is the most sophisticated one.

There's a prominent recommendation for ansible-examples. You can see a group_vars directory, with files which automatically provide values for hosts according to their groups, including the magic all group. The group_vars directory can be placed in the same directory as the playbook.

https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples/tree/master/lamp_simple