Error: Failed to connect to the host via ssh - vagrant

Question

I am trying to learn ansible, and am following the o'riley Ansible Up and running book.
In the getting started section of the book, it asks me to install ansible, virtualbox and vagrant and then via CLI run:
vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64
vagrant up
Afterwards I can ssh into the VM via vagrant ssh or via:
ssh vagrant#127.0.0.1 -p 2222 -i /Users/XXX/playbooks/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
Next is creating the hosts file which looks like this:
testserver ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222 \ ansible_ssh_user=vagrant \ ansible_ssh_private_key_file=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
Lastly is running this command:
ansible testserver -i hosts -m ping
Which gets me:
testserver | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh.",
"unreachable": true
}
Adding -vvv gets me:
No config file found; using defaults
<127.0.0.1> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None
<127.0.0.1> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -q -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o Port=2222 -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/Users/XXX/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r 127.0.0.1 '/bin/sh -c '"'"'( umask 77 && mkdir -p "` echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1468541275.7-255802522359895 `" && echo ansible-tmp-1468541275.7-255802522359895="` echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1468541275.7-255802522359895 `" ) && sleep 0'"'"''
testserver | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh.",
"unreachable": true
}
I tried modifying ansible_ssh_private_key_file in the hosts file to point to the full path of the private key, but that still didn't work:
ansible testserver -i hosts -m ping -vvv
No config file found; using defaults
<127.0.0.1> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None
<127.0.0.1> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -q -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o Port=2222 -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/Users/XXX/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r 127.0.0.1 '/bin/sh -c '"'"'( umask 77 && mkdir -p "` echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1468541370.61-137685863794569 `" && echo ansible-tmp-1468541370.61-137685863794569="` echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1468541370.61-137685863794569 `" ) && sleep 0'"'"''
testserver | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh.",
"unreachable": true
}
This is my Ansible version:
ansible --version
ansible 2.1.0.0
config file =
configured module search path = Default w/o override
Anyone have any ideas why ansible isn't connecting to my vagrant VM?

Answer 1

I don't see any of your inventory variables past the first one taking effect in the ssh command. Does your inventory file really look like this?
testserver ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222 \ ansible_ssh_user=vagrant \ ansible_ssh_private_key_file=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
You shouldn't have backslashes in there. The direct reformatting is
testserver ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222 ansible_ssh_user=vagrant ansible_ssh_private_key_file=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
However, in the long run you probably want to split these out into separate host_vars files.