How to connect to WIndows node using openSSH and Ansible? - windows

Question

I am trying to connect to my windows computer using OpenSSH and Ansible.
I am able to connect using regular ssh, but when I try to connect using Ansible, I get pretty much the same error everytime I change something.
I've also tried running Ansible as root and still nothing
fatal: [IVU]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Authentication or permission failure. In some cases, you may have been able to authenticate and did not have permissions on the remote directory. Consider changing the remote temp path in ansible.cfg to a path rooted in \"/tmp\". Failed command was: ( umask 77 && mkdir -p \"` echo /tmp/ansible-tmp-1502794936.2073953-164132649383245 `\" && echo ansible-tmp-1502794936.2073953-164132649383245=\"` echo /tmp/ansible-tmp-1502794936.2073953-164132649383245 `\" ), exited with result 1", "unreachable": true}
I've tried to change the ssh_args in ansible.cfg to ssh_args= -o ControlMaster=no and no change to the output was made.
I've tried to change the executable in the ansible.cfg to C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe and I got the same error
I've tried changing the remote_dir=/tmp/ and still nothing.
My ansible inventory is:
[IVU]
IVU ansible_host=**IP**
[IVU:vars]
ansible_port=22
ansible_user=**user**
ansible_ssh_pass=**pass**
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=** Keyfile **
It seems like it's failing before even running any tasks, but from the openssh logs on the windows computer I see no difference when ansible connects to it and when I ssh into it.
3724 09:27:38:720 error: Couldn't create pid file "C:\\Program Files\\OpenSSH\\sshd.pid": Permission denied
3724 09:27:41:376 Accepted publickey for **User** from **IP** port 42700 ssh2: RSA SHA256:clNmiKxygl/TLEb5Ob4lZs6JqztoQyxOsjMoHQ2HYgo
3724 09:27:58:533 Received disconnect from **IP** port 42700:11: disconnected by user
3724 09:27:58:533 Disconnected from user **User** **IP** port 42700
3360 09:28:41:398 error: Couldn't create pid file "C:\\Program Files\\OpenSSH\\sshd.pid": Permission denied
3360 09:28:41:616 Accepted publickey for **User** from **IP** port 42704 ssh2: RSA SHA256:clNmiKxygl/TLEb5Ob4lZs6JqztoQyxOsjMoHQ2HYgo
3360 09:28:41:741 Received disconnect from **IP** port 42704:11: disconnected by user
3360 09:28:41:741 Disconnected from user **User** **IP** port 42704
The 9:27 is when I'm connecting using ssh and the 9:28 is when ansible connects.
Is there something I'm missing that I need to change in order for Ansible to work with openSSH on windows?

Answer 1

I figured out a solution by using a reverse ssh tunnel.
I abandoned the idea of trying to use the ssh ansible module with windows since Windows simply doesn't play nicely with it unless you have the windows 10 update. I decided to use the winrm ansible module instead.
What I did is I connected the windows computer to the computer running Ansible by opening a reverse SSH tunnel by using the command:
ssh -p5983 -R 5982:localhost:5986 **my_user**#**my_ip**
For my purposes I had to port forward because my computer was on a separate vlan than the windows computer
Then in Ansible I specified that the host is localhost at port 5982.
This is about as good of a solution for when working with openssh and windows, at least until Ansible supports openssh on windows.