How do I get the REMOTE_USER variable while in a sudo playbook?

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1

[14:04] how do i access the ansible_ssh_user , or user variable?
[14:05] I cant use ansible_user_id because my playbook changes to root
[14:06] I was able to do hacks passing the ssh username like extra-vars="default_ssh_user=$USER’
[14:06] or even under a top level playbook that registers a user var for echo “$USER”
[14:07] but I dont want to do this task indirectly… any help?

  -u REMOTE_USER, --user=REMOTE_USER
                        connect as this user (default=s8weber)

I cant use $ansible_user_id in playbooks that sudo because the user is /root/ not /s8weber/.

How do I get the REMOTE_USER variable?

thanks.

2

At which point do you need this?

If this is when the runner is executing the tasks on the different hosts, I think it depends on the shell, but with bash I have a $SUDO_USER variable.
You should be able to access it in Ansible with $LOOKUP(env, SUDO_USER) (or something close to that, never used lookups myself).

3

The sudo_user could also be made accessible in the host vars with (I think, not tested):

diff --git a/lib/ansible/playbook/play.py b/lib/ansible/playbook/play.py
index e59912c…f1f94ea 100644
— a/lib/ansible/playbook/play.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/playbook/play.py
@@ -94,6 +94,7 @@ class Play(object):
self.tags =

if self.sudo_user != ‘root’:

  • self.vars[‘sudo_user’] = self.sudo_user
    self.sudo = True

*************************************************

4

thanks Mathieu but im not in a python file… im in a playbook…
Also im not trying to get the sudo user im trying to get the user that is connecting to the host…

here is some more background on the issue.

5

He's suggesting a patch to the application to make this variable available.

Curious why the fact username isn't good enough though.

6

Ah yes a patch… But i`m not after the sudo_user.
im looking for the user name that is connecting through ‘ssh’ before sudo

ansible-playbook -i localhost install.yml --user=$USER --extra-vars=“ssh_user=$USER” --ask-sudo-pass

Currently i’m creating the the variable ssh_user as a work around… so I can then pass it to a template.

install.yml would be something like…

  • name render php-fpm file
    sudo: yes
    task:
  • template: src=php-fpm.j2 dest=/etc/php/php-fpm/pool.d/pool-${ssh_user}.conf

php-fpm.j2 would be something like

[pool-{{ ssh_user }}]
user = {{ ssh_user }}
group = {{ ssh_user }}

is there a way to do the same thing but without creating an extra variable for ssh_user?

7

I see.

So we want to just basically expose $ansible_ssh_user as a variable
before we call tasks about it.

This is not difficult at all -- Please file a ticket so we don't forget this.

We're past the feature freeze date for 1.1 (which was Monday), so this
will happen on 1.2's development branch after Tuesday...

A simple workaround now would just be to set the variable in the play,
prompt for it via vars_prompt, or pass it in with --extra-vars.

8

sure ill file the ticket on git hub.

9

issue:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/2516

10

I found this workaround

11

Just using {{ ansible_ssh_user }} works for me - probably that got improved meanwhile.