Ansible AWS EC2 Detecting Server is Running Fails - amazon-ec2

Question

Background:
Just trying to learn how to use Ansible and have been experimenting with the AWS Ec2 module to build and deploy a Ubuntu instance on AWS-EC2. So have built a simple Playbook to create and startup an instance and executed via ansible-playbook -vvvv ic.yml
The playbook is:
---
- name: Create a ubuntu instance on AWS
hosts: localhost
connection: local
gather_facts: False
vars:
# AWS keys for access to the API
ec2_access_key: 'secret-key'
ec2_secret_key: 'secret-key'
region: ap-southeast-2
tasks:
- name: Create a Key-Pair necessary for connection to the remote EC2 host
ec2_key:
name=ic-key region="{{region}}"
register: keypair
- name: Write the Key-Pair to a file for re-use
copy:
dest: files/ic-key.pem
content: "{{ keypair.key.private_key }}"
mode: 0600
when: keypair.changed
- name: start the instance
ec2:
ec2_access_key: "{{ec2_access_key}}"
ec2_secret_key: "{{ec2_secret_key}}"
region: ap-southeast-2
instance_type: t2.micro
image: ami-69631053
key_name: ic-key # key we just created
instance_tags: {Name: icomplain-prod, type: web, env: production} #key-values pairs for naming etc
wait: yes
register: ec2
- name: Wait for instance to start up and be running
wait_for: host = {{item.public_dns_name}} port 22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
with_items: ec2.instances
Problem:
The issue is that when attempting to wait for the instance to fire up, using the wait_for test, as described in Examples for EC-2 module it fails with the following error message:
msg: this module requires key=value arguments (['host', '=', 'ec2-52-64-134-61.ap-southeast-2.compute.amazonaws.com', 'port', '22', 'delay=60', 'timeout=320', 'state=started'])
FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting
Output:
Although the error message appears on the command line when I check in the AWS-Console the Key-Pair and EC2 instance are created and running.
Query:
Wondering
There is some other parameter which I need ?
What is the 'key=value' msg which is the error output being caused by?
Any recommendations on other ways to debug the script to determine the cause of the failure ?
Does it require registration of the host somewhere in the Ansible world ?
Additional NOTES:
Testing the playbook I've observed that the key-pair gets created, the server startup is initiated at AWS as seen from the AWS web console. What appears to be the issue is that the time period of the server to spin up is too long and the script timeouts or fails. Frustratingly, is that the error message is not all that helpful and also wondering if there is any other methods of debugging an ansible script ?

Answer 1

this isn't a problem of "detecting the server is running". As the error message says, it's a problem with syntax.
# bad
wait_for: host = {{item.public_dns_name}} port 22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
# good
wait_for: host={{item.public_dns_name}} port=22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
Additionally, you'll want to run this from the central machine, not the remote (new) server.
local_action: wait_for host={{item.public_dns_name}} port=22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started

Answer 2

Focusing on the wait_for test as you indicate that the rest is working.
Based on the jobs I have running I would think the issue is with the host name, not with the rest of the code. I use an Ansible server in a protected VPC that has network access to the VPC where the servers start up in, and my wait_for code looks like this (variable name updated to match yours):
- name: wait for instances to listen on port 22
wait_for:
delay: 10
state: started
host: "{{ item.private_ip }}"
port: 22
timeout: 300
with_items: ec2.instances
Trying to use DNS instead of an IP address has always proven to be unreliable for me - if I'm registering DNS as part of a job, it can sometimes take a minute to be resolvable (sometimes instant, sometimes not). Using the IP addresses works every time of course - as long as the networking is set up correctly.
If your Ansible server is in a different region or has to use the external IP to access the new servers, you will of course need to have the relevant security groups and add the new server(s) to those before you can use wait_for.