# user parameter is not evaluated, failing the ssh

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/user-parameter-is-not-evaluated-failing-the-ssh/21121>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [April 10, 2016, 6:52pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/user-parameter-is-not-evaluated-failing-the-ssh/21121 "2016-04-10T18:52:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tzach\_Livyatan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tzach\_Livyatan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tzach_Livyatan1)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2016, 6:52pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/user-parameter-is-not-evaluated-failing-the-ssh/21121/1 "2016-04-10T18:52:11Z")

</div>

I tripped on the following, non consistent problem:

I have a playbook which start like:

`

- name: Clean Data Scylla  
hosts: “Scylla”  
user: “{{scylla\_login}}”  
tasks:  
…

`

scylla\_login is defined in a different file, and for most playbook users this works fine, for other, ssh failed.  
When looking into /var/log/secure of the target server, I found:

`  
Invalid user {{scylla\_login}}

`

Look like the var was not evaluated!  
Could this be related to ansible/python/os versio?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tzach\_Livyatan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tzach\_Livyatan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tzach_Livyatan1)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/user-parameter-is-not-evaluated-failing-the-ssh/21121/2 "2016-04-10T19:31:52Z")

</div>

Answering my own question, in case some else have similar issue.

scylla\_login is defined in inventories/ec2/group\_vars/all.yaml

Although I used  
`  
ansible-playbook -i inventories/ec2/ playbook.yaml

`

The static file was not evaluated, similar to  
[https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/8605](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/8605)

I bypass the issue with

`  
ansible-playbook -i inventories/ec2/ -e “@inventories/ec2/group\_vars/all.yaml” playbook.yaml

`

It would have been nice if the original have failed, rather than sending the string, including “{{ }}” as a log in.