enable configuring the machine's hostname

[untoldone]

This enables a vagrant user to create a more realistic test environment if they use the name of their hosts in the inventory file (e.g. if they use the inventory file to create bind9 config)

[command-tab]

👍 Patch works great for me.

[leucos]

Is there any reason not to use env[:vm].config.vm.host_name and set config.vm.host_name = "..." in the Vagrantfile instead of adding a new option in the provisionning block ?

@mavimo : As far as tried, and regarding testing "real life" playbooks, it doesn't help for group_vars & host_vars since the Temp inventory is in /tmp. Line 61 could be changed to

file = Tempfile.new('inventory', tmpdir = '.')

for this to work, assuming Vagrantfile lies in the same directory as the usual inventory (or better, configuring that in the provisionning block).

Otherwise, it's pretty cool !

[untoldone]

Leucos: Honestly, no reason beyond me not realizing that was easily doable -- I would agree that using existing Vagrant metadata that on the surface seems to mean the same thing would probably be better than my solution (does it mean the same thing?). I wrote this patch as a quick fix for testing a bind9 playbook that translates the inventory to zone files and this fix satisfied those needs.

Honestly, I think a better approach to creating the temporary inventory file would be to read the existing hosts file and output a new one with just a targeted group overwritten by the config present in vagrant (either to /tmp or in the same directory etc) -- leaving var sections and other groups intact.

[leucos]

@untoldone

• "does it mean the same thing?" : yes, I was wondering too. I'm not that sure... I mean there might be implications on the vagrant side. We might want to dig vagrants docs first.
• "a better approach to creating the temporary inventory file would be to read the existing hosts file and output a new one with just a targeted group overwritten by the config present in vagrant" : sure, it would be much better, and avoid adding a sometimes long list of group for the host in the provisionning block.

It could be nice to hear @dsander 's opinion on these topics.

[mavimo]

@leucos some example:

---
- hosts: webserver
  vars_files:
    - [ "vars/${inventory_hostname}/apache2.yml",    "vars/apache2.yml" ]

  handlers:
  - include: handlers/apache2.yml

  tasks:
  - include: handlers/apache2.yml

this require to have a inventory_hostname set to a valid value (eg foo.bar.com) and having a inventory_hostname that maatch the production domain make possible to reproduce it with right settings.
My actually forkflow is to create a symlink: foo.bar.local -> foo.bar.com and set in /etc/hosts the IP for foo.bar.local, but is just a trick.
Using Vagrant wwith possibility to set inventory_hostname i can by-pass this and use the same hostname for production and test environment.

[leucos]

@mavimo agreed. However, since temporary inventory is create in /tmp, we can't actually use group_vars/foogroup and host_vars/barhost. I suppose the best way to solve this is to use the actual inventory, and override ansible_ssh_host/ansible_ssh_port using --extra-vars for instance

Here's my attempt, just in case you want to try :
https://github.com/leucos/vagrant-ansible/tree/executing-reallife-playbooks

I can run real life playbooks without modifications.
You can clone, git checkout executing-reallife-playbooks, rake gem and vagrant gem install pkg/vagrant-ansible-0.0.5.gem to test it. I will update the README asap.

Note : of course network related things (e.g. firewall rules) and user authorization stuff (e.g. configuring alloed ssh users) are still tricky since we're running on a different IP and using a different user. But with this in mind, playbooks can be written to cope with this upfront.

[command-tab]

I ran into the same issue using vagrant-ansible almost right away; By using the temporary inventory file, none of my group_vars and host_vars got used, making my playbooks (which use them heavily) rather useless. I ended up having to pass in my existing inventory file to inventory_file and setting hosts. The resulting block in my Vagrantfile ended up like so:

config.vm.provision :ansible do |ansible|
  ansible.playbook = "config/provisioning/site.yml"
  ansible.inventory_file = "config/provisioning/ansible_hosts"
  ansible.hosts = "vagrant"
  ansible.sudo = true
end

The --limit=#{@hostname} in your fork is a good idea — I wasn't aware of that option in Ansible!