Add a way to pass extra variables to ansible-local provisioner

[pas256]

This is for @kelseyhightower and the ansible-local provisioner:

ansible-playbook has an option to pass extra variables along from the command line:

-e EXTRA_VARS, --extra-vars=EXTRA_VARS
                    set additional variables as key=value or YAML/JSON

When using the amazon-chroot builder, it is important to not start any services (e.g. Apache) inside the chroot environment so that the volume can be unmounted correctly. I write my playbooks so that they can be run on both running instances, as well as to build AMIs, and I do that as a flag I pass in a AMI creation time. Right now, there is no way for me to pass that flag to the ansible-local provisioner.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need.

[kelseyhightower]

@pas256 Thanks for requesting this. I have some ideas on how to make this work, expect a pull request for review soon.

[pas256]

@kelseyhightower Have you made any progress on this? I have done an episode on using Aminator and the Ansible Provisioner here, and would like to do one on Packer for comparison, but need this in place before I can use my playbooks.

[strcrzy]

i just needed this, so i submitted #842 which will let you pass in arbitrary arguments in to ansible-playbook.
this should resolve this issue as well, if i understand what you're asking for correctly.

[pas256]

@strcrzy you legend! Thank you

[jgornick]

@kelseyhightower Should probably close this issue out since it's no longer valid.

[coop]

I think there was a bug in #842 that still exists in master that doesn't allow you to pass through the extra variables. In master the extra variables are passed in just before the -c flag without a prefix. I believe this needs to be changed to:

extraArgs := ""
if len(p.config.ExtraArguments) > 0 {
    extraArgs = " --extra-vars " + strings.Join(p.config.ExtraArguments, " ")
}
command := fmt.Sprintf("cd %s && %s %s%s -c local -i %s",
     p.config.StagingDir, p.config.Command, playbook, extraArgs, inventory)

The important part here is the --extra-vars prefix before setting the variables. Given the implementation in master I see the following error:

amazon-ebs: Executing Ansible: ansible-playbook /tmp/packer-provisioner-ansible-local/solo.yml APP=tango REVISION=70c11781cfb3a3b6022924be2b8e487ca9c131f5 -c local -i "127.0.0.1,"
    amazon-ebs: ERROR: the playbook: APP=tango could not be found

with the following packer config:

{
  "type": "ansible-local",
  "playbook_file": "ansible/solo.yml",
  "role_paths": [
    "ansible/roles/solo"
  ],
  "extra_arguments": [
    "APP={{user `app`}}",
    "REVISION={{user `revision`}}"
  ]
}

I couldn't find a test for this functionality in master which is probably why it has gone unnoticed. I'll submit a pull request for the required functionality but I don't know enough about go to write a failing test, I'd appreciate any help with that.

For the time being you can work around this problem by adjusting the command used to run ansible-playbook:

{
  "type": "ansible-local",
  "playbook_file": "ansible/solo.yml",
  "command": "APP={{user `app`}} REVISION={{user `revision`}} ansible-playbook",
  "role_paths": [
    "ansible/roles/solo"
  ]
}

[coop]

Thinking about it more I might have misunderstood the usage of extra_arguments because I could also solve my problem without modifying command with the following:

{
  "type": "ansible-local",
  "playbook_file": "ansible/solo.yml",
  "role_paths": [
    "ansible/roles/solo"
  ],
  "extra_arguments": [
    "--extra-vars"
    "APP={{user `app`}}",
    "REVISION={{user `revision`}}"
  ]
}

This approach also allows you to pass --ask-vault-pass or any of the arguments listed in ansible-playbook --help without packer having to support each and every one of them. I think I was mislead by the original request around --extra-vars and my lack of understanding.

I think some solid examples in the documentation would help with this. Are the examples on github so I can contribute?

[strcrzy]

extra_arguments is for passing additional command line arguments to ansible, beyond the ones already passed in by packer.

it is not solely for passing extra variables to ansible. --extra-vars is an example of one of the extra_arguments that you could pass, but it is not the only one. for example, i pass -vvv in to get to the bottom of things sometimes.

sorry for the confusion, and thank you for offering to add examples. the docs for the ansible provisioner can be found here if you'd like to edit them.

[elithrar]

@coop Curious—how did you pass --ask-vault-pass to Packer? AFAIK, Ansible doesn't let you pass the password as an argument. It either prompts, or you use --vault-password-file filename instead. I'm trying to avoid using a file because I (obviously) don't want the key lying around on a machine.

[coop]

@elithrar I used --vault-password-file on a CI machine.

[emalloy]

Just fyi, this doesn't work unless you first xfer the vault-password-file to the image being provisioned in some shell preprovisioning step. I ended up just using git-crypt, as it's more transparent, and since i've already init'd git-crypt on my local repo, and packer is copying the files across using scp (or some equivalent), the files are already unencrypted, and get destroyed as part of the builtin post-provisioners

If anyone has a better way to do this, please speak up.

[iknite]

Just a quick workaround, to read from stdin the password:

{
    "variables":{
            "pass": "{{env `ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASS`}}"
    },
    "builders": [...],
    "provisioners": [
        {
            "type": "ansible-local",
            "command": "echo '{{user `pass`}}' | ansible-playbook",
            "extra_arguments": "--vault-password-file=/bin/cat"
        }
    ]
}

The only caveat is that it shows your password in your tty (so avoid eavesdroppers)

more info:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-devel/1vFc3y6Ogto

[philbert]

Yes please! I want this!