Ansible can't connect to IOS switches using ssh (previously working)

[Jonathan]

Hey all,

I got a bit of a head scratcher. Long story short, I had to redeploy my Ubuntu VM bcuz hyper-v sucks.

Anyways, I was hoping the only thing I would have difficulty with was re-creating my hosts.ini file and my ansible.cfg file. That was not the case.

I got everything where I wanted it, and tried to run my playbook and keep getting this error:

**jonathan@AnsibleVM:/etc/ansible/YAnsible-playbooks$ ansible-playbook getversion.yaml **
[WARNING]: Invalid characters were found in group names but not replaced, use -vvvv to see details
[WARNING]: * Failed to parse /etc/ansible/hosts with yaml plugin: We were unable to read either as
JSON nor YAML, these are the errors we got from each: JSON: Expecting value: line 2 column 2 (char
2) Syntax Error while loading YAML. did not find expected The error appears to
be in ‘/etc/ansible/hosts’: line 3, column 1, but may be elsewhere in the file depending on the
exact syntax problem. The offending line appears to be: [switches:children] LABCAT-1DFX-01 ^ here
[WARNING]: * Failed to parse /etc/ansible/hosts with ini plugin: /etc/ansible/hosts:6: Section
[switch:vars] not valid for undefined group: switch
[WARNING]: Unable to parse /etc/ansible/hosts as an inventory source
[WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match ‘all’

**PLAY [Get interface and vers info] ********************************************************************

**TASK [Gathering Facts] ********************************************************************************
fatal: [LABCAT-S04Q-02]: UNREACHABLE! => {“changed”: false, “msg”: “Failed to connect to the host via ssh: Unable to negotiate with 10.10.41.3 port 22: no matching key exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1”, “unreachable”: true}
fatal: [LABCAT-1DFX-01]: UNREACHABLE! => {“changed”: false, “msg”: “Failed to connect to the host via ssh: jonathan@10.10.41.2: Permission denied (publickey,keyboard-interactive,password).”, “unreachable”: true}

**PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************************************
**LABCAT-1DFX-01 : ok=0 changed=0 unreachable=1 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 **
LABCAT-S04Q-02 : ok=0 changed=0 unreachable=1 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

BTW, I can fully connecting using SSH and the creds used in the Ansible config.

What I’ve tried:
Updating the ansible.cfg file:

[defaults]

inventory = /etc/ansible/hosts
ssh_type = auto
host_key_auto_add = true
host_key_checking = false

Double checking host file:

[switches:children]
LABCAT-1DFX-01
LABCAT-S04Q-02

[switch:vars]
ansible_network_os=ios
ansible_user=redacted
ansible_password=redacted
ansible_connection=network_cli

[LABCAT-1DFX-01]

LABCAT-1DFX-01 ansible_host=10.10.41.2

[LABCAT-S04Q-02]

LABCAT-S04Q-02 ansible_host=10.10.41.3

I’ve tried generating ssh rsa keys using ssh-keygen.

Thanks, sorry I know there is a LOT of text to this one.

[binbashroot]

The group you’re running against is “switches”. The group that you tied your vars to is “switch”. Therefore your vars are not being leveraged against the “switches” group.

[Jonathan]

Yikes…

Well, at least it got fixed

Thanks!