vagrant ansible The following settings don't exist: inventory_file

Question

I've pulled down a git repo and ran vagrant up but I'm getting this error message

The following settings don't exist: inventory_file

I've installed virtual box and vagrant and ansible for osx mountain lion.

But I can't get anything to work.

also when I run ansible all -m ping -vvvv I get

<192.168.0.62> ESTABLISH CONNECTION FOR USER: Grant
<192.168.0.62> EXEC ['ssh', '-tt', '-vvv', '-o', 'ControlMaster=auto', '-o', 'ControlPersist=60s', '-o', 'ControlPath=/Users/Grant/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r', '-o', 'Port=22', '-o', 'KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no', '-o', 'PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey', '-o', 'PasswordAuthentication=no', '-o', 'ConnectTimeout=10', '192.168.0.62', "/bin/sh -c 'mkdir -p $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1379790346.17-244145524385544 && chmod a+rx $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1379790346.17-244145524385544 && echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1379790346.17-244145524385544'"]
192.168.0.62 | FAILED => SSH encountered an unknown error. The output was:
OpenSSH_5.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: auto-mux: Trying existing master
debug1: Control socket "/Users/Grant/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-192.168.0.62-22-Grant" does not exist
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.0.62 [192.168.0.62] port 22.
debug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: connect to address 192.168.0.62 port 22: Operation timed out
ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.62 port 22: Operation timed out

Any ideas on what is going on will be appreciated :)

Answer 1

For the inventory_file issue try changing the Vagrantfile to use inventory_path instead. I think this subtle change occurred with Vagrant 1.3.x. If you don't want to modify the Vagrantfile try using Vagrant 1.2.x.

When running:

ansible all -m ping -vvvv

This will use your current user and will look in the default location for the Ansible hosts inventory (/etc/ansible/hosts).

In order to get it working with a Vagrant defined VM you need to use the vagrant user, specify the SSH key to use during the connection and specify the location of the hosts inventory, e.g.

ansible all \
  -i provisioning/inventory # <-- or wherever the inventory is \ 
  -m ping \
  -u vagrant \
  --private-key ~/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key

Answer 2

It has been repeated all over the block about using ~/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key but I found that it was using actually .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key, in the path where the Vagrantfile is. They probably changed their key generation to be per-machine, not user-wide, but the documentation does not reflect that yet.

So for the whole command, it would be:

ansible-playbook -i .vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory --private-key=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key -u vagrant playbook.yml

You can check whether is one or the other by running vagrant ssh-config and looking for the IdentityFile value.