inventory option in config ignored

[udondan]

I just updated my Ansible clone from the master branch.

The inventory option in the ansible.cfg now is ignored.

[defaults]
inventory = ./inventory/default

ERROR! Unable to find an inventory file (/etc/ansible/ansible_hosts), specify one with -i ?

This used to work in all previous versions (since inventory was introduced as config option)

[bcoca]

i just tested this and it works for me, considering that "/etc/ansible/ansible_hosts" is not the default, could you have another entry or another ansible.cfg pointing at that?

if you run with -v ansible should show which ansible.cfg it is using.

[udondan]

Ansible is using the correct config file. I made sure other options are not ignored. it is only the option for the inventory.

udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ ansible --version
ansible 2.0.0
  config file = /Users/udondan/ansible-test/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = None


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ tree
.
├── ansible.cfg
├── inventory
│   └── local
└── playbook.yml

1 directories, 3 files


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ cat ansible.cfg
[defaults]
inventory         = ./inventory/local


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ cat inventory/local 
[local]
localhost


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ ansible-playbook playbook.yml -vvv
Using /Users/udondan/ansible-test/ansible.cfg as config file
ERROR! Unable to find an inventory file (/etc/ansible/ansible_hosts), specify one with -i ?

I just pulled from devel branch before testing this again with commit c6733cc1a7546273cf8e0e940ec60c7c38761b67.

Now downgrading and running the same again:

udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible-2.0.0-py2.7.egg/


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/ansibl*


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ brew install ansible
==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/ansible-1.9.2.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/ansible-1.9.2.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz
==> Pouring ansible-1.9.2.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.2: 4748 files, 58M


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ ansible --version
ansible 1.9.2
  configured module search path = None


udondan@myhost:~/ansible-test$ ansible-playbook playbook.yml

PLAY [Testing] **************************************************************** 

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
ok: [localhost]

TASK: [debug msg="OK"] ******************************************************** 
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "OK"
}

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0   

[amenonsen]

Do you have ANSIBLE_HOSTS or ANSIBLE_INVENTORY set in your environment?

[udondan]

Indeed, ANSIBLE_HOSTS is set, ANSIBLE_INVENTORY is not. And that seems to have caused it.

I had this value in my .bashrc

export ANSIBLE_HOSTS=/etc/ansible/ansible_hosts

That was from when I first tried Ansible about 1,5 years ago and does not reflect my current setup. Removing the entry now solved the problem.

So it seems like the precedence has changed. In 1.9.x the settings in ansible.cfg relative to the playbook weighs more than the env ANSIBLE_HOSTS. In 2.x ANSIBLE_HOSTS overrides the value in ansible.cfg.

Is this change expected? I wasn't able to find a statement in the docs how the precedence actually should be.

I think it made more sense the way it used to be. When you have different projects you probably have an ansible.cfg in each root folder of the project. Those settings should be used. The environment makes sense as a fallback when nothing else is defined and you run an ad-hoc command with ansible on some hosts.

[bcoca]

Its a mismatch, for backwards compatibility ansible_hosts has precedence over ansible_inventory, but it gets set to ANSIBLE_HOSTS which then makes ANSIBLE_HOSTS trump ansible_inventory unintentionally.

[bcoca]

it was actually intended the other way around in but the switch to v2 messed with that code