Ansible on macOS sshpass program workaround - macos

Question

I'm using homebrew to install Ansible on macOS Catalina (I previously installed via pip too per the documentation). The problem is that when I attempt to use a test playbook, I receive the following error:
target1 | FAILED! => {
"msg": "to use the 'ssh' connection type with passwords, you must install the sshpass program"
}
The issue is that sshpass isn't readily available on macOS via homebrew, etc. I've found a couple of options of installation for this but attempted to make the following changes prior to installing this:
export ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False
host_key_checking=false within the ansible.cfg in the same directory
None of the above changes worked, should I just install sshpass, or is there another workaround? Or should I just use virtualbox and call it a day?
For reference, this is the following playbook, it's a simple ping test that I'm attempting to use on a local Raspberry Pi that I've already been able to SSH into:
-
name: Test connectivity to target servers
hosts: all
tasks:
- name: Ping test
ping:
The inventory.txt file looks like this:
target1 ansible_host=192.168.x.x ansible_ssh_pass=<password>

Answer 1

Should I just install sshpass, or is there another workaround? Or should I just use virtualbox and call it a day?
It depends on the use case. What do you want to do? Use Ansible for development purposes, or use the machine with IP 192.168.x.x for production workloads?
It is preferred to use ssh keypairs instead of passwords. You can create these on the target host by executing command: "ssh-keygen". This way, you can 'work-around' the use of sshpass.
To help you out with using Virtualbox/Vagrant.
After installing Vagrant, create a file named "Vagrantfile" in a directory, place this in there:
# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
v.memory = 2048
v.cpus = 2
end
config.ssh.insert_key = false
config.vm.define "vm-local-1" do | me |
me.vm.box = "rocky8-python3"
me.vm.hostname = "vm-local-1"
me.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: 65530, id: "ssh"
me.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 8080
me.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 443, host: 4443
me.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 27017, host: 27017
me.vm.network "private_network", ip: "10.0.0.110"
me.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
ansible.inventory_path = "inventory"
ansible.limit = "vm-local-1"
end
end
end
Place this in /etc/vbox/networks.conf. This allows the usage of the 10.x.x.x network in Vagrant.
* 10.0.0.0/8 192.168.56.0/21
Create an inventory file, named 'inventory', and place this content in there. Replace my_username with your Username.
[local_test]
vm-local-1 ansible_ssh_user=vagrant ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=65530 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/Users/<my_username>/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key
[local_test:vars]
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
Then, create an Ansible playbook like this:
---
- hosts: local_test
gather_facts: false
become: true
tasks:
- shell: echo
Now, you can execute command: "vagrant up", and the VM will be automatically created, and the playbook will be executed automatically as well.

Answer 2

This ended up being more of a novice issue as I am still very new to the tool. Within my inventory file, I added ansible_user=pi which resolved the issue here.
To solve this, I logged into the raspberry pi via a manual ssh connection and ran the command systemctl status sshd. This showed me multiple login failures and that ansible was defaulting to my macOS user.