Since my company needs time to consider security issues with WinRM which is used by Ansible to manage windows hosts I was thinking about doing it via Cygwin ssh connection which we already have installed.
Is this even possible?
I tried to setup env variables like that:
ansible_connection: ssh
ansible_shell_type: cmd
End I'm trying to create a folder with the folliwng playbook:
- name: Ensure C:\Temp exists
win_file:
path: C:\Temp
state: directory
Gathering Facts is succesfull, but I'm getting: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Unhandled exception while executing module: The system cannot find the path specified"}
In theory, Ansible, since v.2.8, supports doing connections through SSH, new windows even come with a Microsoft fork of OpenSSH.
I am having trouble to make it work (that's how I ended up here), but I recommend you to take a look to the following links:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/windows_setup.html#windows-ssh-setup
If you can do SSH using the PK, but you get an unreachable from Ansible, you may need to check also this:
How to fix "Unreachable" when ping windows with ansible over ssh?
For Windows Server 2019/10's OpenSSH configuration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs3wBl_mMH0
Setting up OpenSSH for Windows using public key authentication
Related
I'm using Ubuntu Linux
I have created an inventory file and I have put my own system IP address there.
I have written a playbook to install the nginx package.
I'm getting the following error:
false, msg" : Failed to connect to the host via ssh: connect to host myip : Connection refused, unreachable=true
How can I solve this?
You could use the hosts keyword with the value localhost
- name: Install nginx package
hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: Install nginx package
apt:
name: nginx
state: latest
Putting your host IP directly in your inventory treats your local machine as any other remote target. Although this can work, ansible will use the ssh connection plugin by default to reach your IP. If an ssh server is not installed/configured/running on your host it will fail (as you have experienced), as well as if you did not configure the needed credentials (ssh keys, etc.).
You don't need to (and in most common situations you don't want to) declare localhost in your inventory to use it as it is implicit by default. The implicit localhost uses the local connection plugin which does not need ssh at all and will use the same user to run the tasks as the one running the playbook.
For more information on connection plugins, see the current list
See #gary lopez answer for an example playbook to use localhost as target.
I used pip to install Ansible in MacOS. But I cannot find the /etc/ansible folder. Neither the inventory file.
I want to run my playbook in minikube environment. But the playbook returns,
[WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all'
[WARNING]: Could not match supplied host pattern, ignoring: 192.168.99.105
How to solve this issue?
I looked into this matter and using Ansible for managing minikube is not an easy topic. Let me elaborate on that:
The main issue is cited below:
Most Ansible modules that execute under a POSIX environment require a Python interpreter on the target host. Unless configured otherwise, Ansible will attempt to discover a suitable Python interpreter on each target host the first time a Python module is executed for that host.
-- Ansible Docs
What that means is that most of the modules will be unusable. Even ping
Steps to reproduce:
Install Ansible
Install Virtualbox
Install minikube
Start minikube
SSH into minikube
Configure Ansible
Test
Install Ansible
As the original poster said it can be installed through pip.
For example:
$ pip3 install ansible
Install VirtualBox
Please download and install appropriate version for your system.
Install minikube
Please follow this site: Kubernetes.io
Start minikube
You can start minikube by invoking command:
$ minikube start --vm-driver=virtualbox
Parameter --vm-driver=virtualbox is important because it will be useful later for connecting to the minikube.
Please wait for minikube to successfully deploy on the Virtualbox.
SSH into minikube
It is necessary to know the IP address of minikube inside the Virtualbox.
One way of getting this IP is:
Open Virtualbox
Click on the minikube virtual machine for it to show
Enter root for account name. It should not ask for password
Execute command: $ ip a | less and find the address of network interface. It should be in format of 192.168.99.XX
From terminal that was used to start minikube please run below command:
$ minikube ssh
Command above will ssh to newly created minikube environment and it will store a private key in location:
HOME_DIRECTORY .minikube/machines/minikube/id_rsa
id_rsa will be needed to connect to the minikube
Try to login to minikube by invoking command:
ssh -i PATH_TO/id_rsa docker#IP_ADDRESS
If login has happened correctly there should be no issues with Ansible
Configure Ansible
For using ansible-playbook 2 files will be needed:
Hosts file with information about hosts
Playbook file with statements what you require from Ansible to do
Example hosts file:
[minikube_env]
minikube ansible_host=IP_ADDRESS ansible_ssh_private_key_file=./id_rsa
[minikube_env:vars]
ansible_user=docker
ansible_port=22
The ansible_ssh_private_key_file=./id_rsa will tell Ansible to use ssh key from file with correct key to this minikube instance.
Note that this declaration will need to have id_rsa file in the same location as rest of the files.
Example playbook:
- name: Playbook for checking connection between hosts
hosts: all
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Task to check the connection
ping:
You can test the connection by invoking command:
$ ansible-playbook -i hosts_file ping.yaml
Above command should fail because there is no Python interpreter installed.
fatal: [minikube]: FAILED! => {"ansible_facts": {"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"}, "changed": false, "module_stderr": "Shared connection to 192.168.99.101 closed.\r\n", "module_stdout": "/bin/sh: /usr/bin/python: No such file or directory\r\n", "msg": "The module failed to execute correctly, you probably need to set the interpreter.\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error", "rc": 127}
There is a successful connection between Ansible and minikube but there is no Python interpreter to back it up.
There is a way to use Ansible without Python interpreter.
This Ansible documentation is explaining the use of raw module.
I have configured WinRM at Windows Server 2012 machine using the script suggested by Ansible team: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1
At Ansible control machine (Linux box), the configuration looks like this:
ansible_user: Administrator
ansible_password: PASS
ansible_port: 5985
ansible_connection: winrm
ansible_winrm_scheme: http
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore
Trying to ping Windows machine I still get:
10.2.75.142 | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "plaintext: the specified credentials were rejected by the server",
"unreachable": true
}
User credentials are working credentials of local Windows user, belonging to Administrator group. Am I still missing some config on either side?
I've had similar problem. Through Ansible I was getting:
the specified credentials were rejected by the server
but when executing command from windows machine using winrs it was fine. For example:
winrs -r:https://myserver.com -u:Administrator -p:PASS ipconfig
was going through.
Unfortunately didn't find any solution to have Ansible running with basic authentication. Workaround was to use NTLM authentication. Just added
ansible_winrm_transport: ntlm
to control machine configuration and it works fine ever since.
Every time I try running a playbook to automate some installations in Windows Server, my Windows Remote Host seems to be unreachable.
Here, I am trying to install IIS Server and my playbook looks like this :
---
- hosts : windows
tasks :
- name : Install Microsoft IIS
win_feature :
name : Web-Server
state : present
And the error is :
fatal: [ec2-54-197-197-91.compute-1.amazonaws.com]: UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "ssl: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='ec2-54-197-197-91.compute-1.amazonaws.com', port=5986): Max retries exceeded with url: /wsman (Caused by ConnectTimeoutError(<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x1b11310>, 'Connection to ec2-54-197-197-91.compute-1.amazonaws.com timed out. (connect timeout=30)'))",
"unreachable": true
}
But, now I came to know that, to run playbooks for Windows, I need to have winrm installed on my control node.
I have done the following :
pip install "pywinrm>=0.1.1"
I have added the public ip of Windows Instance and my hosts file looks like:
[local]
127.0.0.1
[aws]
ec2-54-152-85-197.compute-1.amazonaws.com
[windows]
ec2-54-197-197-91.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Then, I created a directory "group_vars" in /etc/ansible, and in that a file windows.yml which reads :
ansible_user: Administrator
ansible_password: SecretPasswordGoesHere
ansible_port: 5986
ansible_connection: winrm
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore
Please let me know where I am going wrong.
(most likely, because you have not mentioned it)
You need to configure remote commands in PowerShell on your Windows instance (as described in the Windows system prep section). Execute the following (with administrator permissions):
iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex
Before, depending on your settings, you might also need to enable the PowerShell execution policy, set the network interface to private network (mind the InterfaceAlias value below) and enable PowerShell remoting.
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force
Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceAlias Ethernet0 -NetworkCategory Private
Enable-PSRemoting
I am testing ansible (developer build) to connect to a windows machine.
ansible 2.0.0 (devel d1b98ec776)
The following command fails
ansible inh-jnambood-dt.india.mentorg.com -m win_ping -vvvv
Error is as below
bash-4.1$ ansible inh-jnambood-dt.india.mentorg.com -m win_ping -vvvv
Using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file
Loaded callback minimal of type stdout, v2.0
<inh-jnambood-dt.india.mentorg.com> ESTABLISH WINRM CONNECTION FOR USER: jnambood#MGC.MENTORG.COM on PORT 5985 TO inh-jnambood-dt.india.mentorg.com
inh-jnambood-dt.india.mentorg.com | FAILED! => {
"failed": true,
"msg": "ERROR! kerberos: (('Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information', 851968), ('Server not found in Kerberos database', -1765328377)), plaintext: 401 Unauthorized."
jnambood is my user id MGC.MENTORG.COM is the domain
Clearly there is some step I missed. What should I do to fix this error?
That usually means that the Linux host where you're running kinit is not joined to the domain (ie, it doesn't have a properly configured computer account in the domain). The existing docs unhelpfully omit that requirement...
I've also seen this occur where the FQDN of the the host is not entered in both the command and the ansible hosts file.
Try something like:
inh-jnambood-dt.mcg.mentorg.com
HTH
I'm not using Ansible, but pywinrm directly. To get things working from a RHEL7 computer to a Windows 10 host in the domain, I changed # to / in the pywinrm code. I did this because I saw other software use HTTP/hostname and not HTTP#hostname when talking to Kerberos. Hope this is useful for somebody.
https://github.com/requests/requests-kerberos/pull/141/commits
We had this same error. For us, it was resolved by shortening the hostname to have less than 15 characters.