# Promlem with : ssh as regular user which has sudo priviledges, and execute tasks as sudo

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** vmware\
**Created:** [January 16, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286 "2015-01-16T00:10:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dhruvin\_Shah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@Dhruvin\_Shah](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dhruvin_Shah)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286/1 "2015-01-16T00:10:37Z")

</div>

Hi All,

I have a situation where, we need to disable the “root” user. and need to make configuration changes to linux servers using a regular(cafe3) user **which has sudo privileges.**  
To achieve that, I am ssh in to server using “cafe3” using ansible, and mentioning the --sudo flag while executing it.

**Ansible-Attempt-1:**

~\>ansible all --inventory-file=inv\_my.yaml -m setup -u root --ask-pass **–sudo-user=root** --ask-sudo-pass --sudo  
SSH password:  
sudo password [defaults to SSH password]:  
[vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com](http://vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com) | FAILED =\> Authentication failure.

**Ansible-Attempt-2:**  
~\>ansible all --inventory-file=inv\_my.yaml -m setup -u root --ask-pass **–sudo-user=cafe3** --ask-sudo-pass --sudo  
SSH password:  
sudo password [defaults to SSH password]:  
[vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com](http://vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com) | FAILED =\> Authentication failure.

**Manual attempt-3:**  
If I ssh in to server using user as cafe3, and try to run command like “sudo ls”. It works fine.  
It does ask me for sudo password and I provided the same password as I did in attempt-1 and attempt-2 above.

Please help. Thanks in advance.

- Dhruvin Shah

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 12:49am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286/2 "2015-01-16T00:49:19Z")

</div>

I believe you have some of your options a little backwards.

You specified that you cannot login as root, however ‘-u root’ specifies that you are attempting to connect via the root user.

You probably want:

ansible all --inventory-file=inv\_my.yaml -m setup -u cafe3 --ask-pass --ask-sudo-pass --sudo

A few additional things:

1. –sudo-user=cafe3 will tell ansible that you want to run the sudo commands as cafe3, you instead wants this to be ‘root’
2. The default for --sudo-user is root so you can actually just leave that off

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dhruvin\_Shah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@Dhruvin\_Shah](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dhruvin_Shah)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 1:57am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286/3 "2015-01-16T01:57:34Z")

</div>

Thanks Matt. Appreciate your help and time.

So I tried the command which you posted, still no success.

**ansible all --inventory-file=inv\_my.yaml -m setup -u cafe3 --ask-pass --ask-sudo-pass --sudo -vv**  
SSH password:  
sudo password [defaults to SSH password]:  
\<[vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com](http://vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com)\> REMOTE\_MODULE setup  
[vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com](http://vcac148-085-217.eng.vmware.com) | FAILED =\> SSH encountered an unknown error during the connection. We recommend you re-run the command using -vvvv, which will enable SSH debugging output to help diagnose the issue

Please help me figure the problem with my usage or a workaround here.

Thanks,  
Dhruvin Shah

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 2:03am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/promlem-with-ssh-as-regular-user-which-has-sudo-priviledges-and-execute-tasks-as-sudo/17286/4 "2015-01-16T02:03:42Z")

</div>

As mentioned in the output, add -vvvv to your ansible command. It should help identify the issue.