# Am I missing something or Ansible is uselessly verbose?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [March 2, 2021, 12:25am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705 "2021-03-02T00:25:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Istvan\_Kis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/da6949/32.png) [@Istvan\_Kis](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Istvan_Kis)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2021, 12:25am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705/1 "2021-03-02T00:25:08Z")

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I am just starting to learn Ansible as I need it for my current job.  
I am kind of disappointed.  
Why can’t:  
_become: yes_  
_become\_user: root_

Just be:  
_user: root_

Can you become anything else other than a user?

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**Author:** ![jean-yves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a587f6/32.png) [@jean-yves](https://forum.ansible.com/u/jean-yves)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2021, 3:21am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705/2 "2021-03-02T03:21:40Z")

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“user” is the name of a module ! (since 2.10 it is now ansible.builtin.user but for now there’s some backward compatibility)

You can alternate part of your playbook with some being root or another user and some with the remote\_user. So these different tag are needed, but you can factorize them on the play level or put them in the config file if you want

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**Author:** ![Nuno\_Jordao](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a4c791/32.png) [@Nuno\_Jordao](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Nuno_Jordao)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2021, 10:48am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705/3 "2021-03-02T10:48:33Z")

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Hello,

“become: yes” means you need to become a different user than the user used to connect. By default “root” as is normally used to elevate privileges.

“_become\_user: postgres_” if you need a different user, other than connecting user or root.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/original/1X/1882d9a01da5d8996a862359b0913cc568a39b84.svg) [@system](https://forum.ansible.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 12:20am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/am-i-missing-something-or-ansible-is-uselessly-verbose/34705/4 "2021-03-03T00:20:48Z")

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it is 'useless' for those not using certain features, but mandatory to  
support them.

Also you have the 'user' module and user(deprecated)/remote\_user  
keywords (login user) so become\_user is required for disambiguation,  
but you can drop `become_user: root` since that is the default.