Ansible and remote X

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1

All,

I need to launch a program on a remote node that has a gui and display that gui on the local node from which I ran ansible.

I can do this manually just fine. Run the following and xclock from the remote node appears on the local node. Good!!

$ ssh -X -v remote $ xclock

Here’s what I’m doing in ansible:

playbook

`

2

I can do this manually just fine. Run the following and xclock from
the remote node appears on the local node. Good!!

$ ssh -X -v remote
$ xclock

Here's what I'm doing in ansible:

playbook

---
- hosts: remote

  tasks:
   - name: Start xcalc

     shell: "xcalc"

You ran 'xclock' manually, but your playbook says 'xcalc'. Does it work if
your playbook says 'xclock'?

ERROR: ...command not found...

That could also be a path thing; maybe xcalc isn't in your path when
Ansible logs in. Try /usr/X11/bin/xclock, or whatever the full path to it is?

                                      -Josh (jbs@care.com)

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3

Good catch Josh, but the issue remains. My remote node has both xclock and xcalc installed. It’s standard gnome stuff. Maybe I am reading the error message wrong:

NOTE: hla2 is my remote node. The “command not found” entry is 4th line up from the bottom. It says UREACHABLE, then it connects anyway. Go figure.

fatal: [hla2]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: OpenSSH_6.6.1, OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014\r\ndebug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config\r\ndebug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *\r\nPseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.\r\ndebug1: Connecting to hla2 [192.168.50.102] port 22.\r\ndebug1: Connection established.\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa type 1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_dsa type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_ed25519 type -1\r\ndebug1: identity file /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1\r\ndebug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0\r\ndebug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2.8\r\ndebug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2.8\r\ndebug1: match: OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2.8 pat OpenSSH_6.6.1* compat 0x04000000\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received\r\ndebug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none\r\ndebug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none\r\ndebug1: sending SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_INIT\r\ndebug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY\r\ndebug1: Server host key: ECDSA 57:6f:c3:a9:ab:2f:8a:ae:62:76:71:0e:78:cc:ca:37\r\ndebug1: Host 'hla2' is known and matches the ECDSA host key.\r\ndebug1: Found key in /home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts:4\r\ndebug1: ssh_ecdsa_verify: signature correct\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent\r\ndebug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent\r\ndebug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received\r\ndebug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password\r\ndebug1: Next authentication method: publickey\r\ndebug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa\r\ndebug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 279\r\ndebug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).\r\nAuthenticated to hla2 ([192.168.50.102]:22).\r\ndebug1: channel 0: new [client-session]\r\ndebug1: Requesting no-more-sessions@openssh.com\r\ndebug1: Entering interactive session.\r\ndebug1: Requesting X11 forwarding with authentication spoofing.\r\ndebug1: Sending environment.\r\ndebug1: Sending env LANG = en_US.UTF-8\r\n-bash: line 1: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6.1p1: command not found\nConnection timed out during banner exchange\r\ndebug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1\r\ndebug1: fd 0 clearing O_NONBLOCK\r\ndebug1: fd 1 clearing O_NONBLOCK\r\ndebug1: fd 2 clearing O_NONBLOCK\r\ndebug1: Killed by signal 1.\r\n", "unreachable": true}

4

SOLVED!!!

I made the following change and it worked.

[fedmanager] hla2 ansible_ssh_extra_args='-v -X'

The whole business of -o ProxyCommand etc… was leading me astray. Do the above and remote X is a breeze.