Unable to ping my Windows Server using win_ping - windows

Question

When I tried to ping my Windows instance using ansible windows -i hosts.ini -m win_ping, I got the following error:
54.197.197.91 | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "plaintext: the specified credentials were rejected by the server",
"unreachable": true
}
My hosts.ini file looks like:
[windows]
54.197.197.91
[windows:vars]
ansible_ssh_user=Administrator
ansible_ssh_pass=MyPassword123!
ansible_ssh_port=5985
ansible_connection=winrm
To solve that, I have done this :
ansible-vault create secret.yml
and entered my password there like this:
win_initial_password: MyPassword123!
Then, my hosts.ini file looked like:
[windows]
54.197.197.91
[windows:vars]
ansible_ssh_user=Administrator
ansible_ssh_pass={{ win_initial_password }}
ansible_ssh_port=5985
ansible_connection=winrm
When I tried pinging, I got the below error :
54.197.197.91 | FAILED! => {
"failed": true,
"msg": "the field 'password' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'win_initial_password' is undefined"
}
Where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

I solved it by changing these :
ansible_ssh_port=5986
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation=ignore
This worked.

Answer 2

As I was following an Ansible example similar to the original post, the accepted answer didn't work for me, the following got it working
Note: This is sending password in plain text so don't use in production
On the target machine, run a powershell with admin rights and enter these commands:
Set-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Service\Auth\Basic -Value $true
winrm set winrm/config/service '#{AllowUnencrypted="true"}'
Also verify your firewall is configured correctly to allow the necessary ports through (TCP/5985, TCP/5986)
Sources:
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/windows_winrm.html#authentication-options
https://github.com/diyan/pywinrm/issues/114

Answer 3

Still was an issue for me. My solution was to reinstall python-pip packages related to winrm from scratch. I had to use official Ansible documentation. As per documentation:
apt-get install python-pip git libffi-dev libssl-dev -y
pip install ansible pywinrm
Port number for Windows is 5986 so you var configuration should be ansible_ssh_port: 5986

Answer 4

I came across this same issue even with "AllowUnencrypted" set to true. I observed that win_ping was working for IEUser that was added to Administrator group but failing with
windows-server | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "plaintext: the specified credentials were rejected by the server",
"unreachable": true
}
for test-user that was not in Administrator group.
So I added the test-user to Administrator group and the issue got resolved.

Answer 5

I've googled a lot and finally the below configuration worked for me. I've added ntlm to my config file.
ansible_user: user#DOMAIN.COM
ansible_password: password
ansible_connection: winrm
ansible_ssh_port: 5986
ansible_winrm_transport: ntlm
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore

Answer 6

Windows:
I have installed UBUNTU18-LTE in windows and face a lot of issues. So sharing my experience with the same error. Hope this will help.
The user must be local. Guys remember the user(ansible) must be a local(host - 192.168.11.22) admin user else no use of the below process.
Hosts file example.
cat /etc/ansible/hosts
[win]
192.168.11.22
[win:vars]
ansible_connection=winrm
ansible_user=ansible # Local admin user of host machine 192.168.11.22
ansible_password=ansible123
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation=ignore
ansible_winrm_trasport=basic
ansible_port=5985 #HTTP
Run the below command on host PowerShell windows.
winrm configsddl default #Give permission to ansible user
Post step 2 configuration execute below 2 commands on host PowerShell.
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth '#{Basic="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/service '#{AllowUnencrypted="true"}'
The Other use-full PowerShell commands to test the winrm connection.
winrm enumerate winrm/config/Listener.
winrm get winrm/config
WinRM quickconfig #Check winrm service is running
winrs -r:http://hostservername:5985/wsman -u:RDPusername -p:RDPpassword ipconfig/all