using host_vars in dynamically created inventory

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1

Hey guys,

I’m using the Rackspace public cloud for hosting our app and as such I want to be able to create the Ansible hosts inventory file dynamically.

I’ve come across:

The issue I’ve got is that I need to be able to include host_vars in the JSON output of the script which creates the inventory dynamically. I need to do this so that I can specify ansible_ssh_host for the boxes. I can’t just use the IP because I also have associated files in host_vars for the hosts.

e.g.

  1. I have two clients: client01 and client02 (these are the cloud server names)

  2. Each client has its own file in host_vars/

  3. client02 cloud server is destroyed and recreated, therefore IPv4 change

  4. Hosts inventory needs to have the alias client02 but a value for ansible_ssh_host for its new IP

Thanks :slight_smile:

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2

Jake,

There is a pull request open right now on the rax.py inventory script that addresses some of your issues.

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/4326

It uses the name of the server in the inventory but sets ansible_ssh_host using the IP of the server as a hostvar in the output of the inventory script.

With that improvement, there should be no concern with using the name as a host_var file. Just waiting on the merge to happen.

3

Ah ok, great. Thanks Matt :slight_smile:

4

FYI, you can still use group_vars/ and host_vars/ with dynamic inventory scripts.

Just put them alongside your scripts or playbooks just as you would do normally, and you can define ansible_ssh_host there if you want.

5

I’m in sort of the same boat. I don’t necessarily want dynamic inventory, but I just want to collect information from the rax tasks that I just ran in a playbook and drop those new servers into a templates inventory file.

Pretty much this: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.ansible/2700 but I’m not having much success understanding how to do it properly