Ansible synchronize prompts passphrase even if already entered at the beginning

Question

The synchronize module of Ansible (v1.6.5) prompts for the passphrase (Enter passphrase for key) even though I already entered it at the beginning of running th

Answer 1

The synchronize command (up to at least Ansible 1.6.6) seems to ignore the normal SSH control socket opened by Ansible. Your task could expand to the following:

{
    "cmd": "rsync --delay-updates -FF --compress --archive
        --rsh 'ssh  -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no'
        --out-format='<>%i %n%L'
        /home/me/src/ user@host:/dest/",
    "failed": true,
    "rc": 23
}

To get these details, run your playbook with the -v option. As a workaround for this, you can start ssh-agent and add cache your SSH key with ssh-add. Refer to their manual pages for details.

Extra caveats with the synchronize module:

• When run with sudo: yes, ansible will run with --rsh 'sudo ssh' which will break if the remote sudo configuration requires a password and/ or TTY. Solution: set sudo: no in your task definition.
• The user that logs into the remote machine is your SSH user (ansible_ssh_user), not the sudo user. I have not found a way to override this user (besides an untested method that overrides the user with -o User option via one of the other options (dest_port="22 -o User=your_user"?) in combination with set_remote_user=yes).

This is taken from my tasks file:

- name: sync app files
  sudo: no
  synchronize: src={{app_srcdir}}/ dest={{appdir}}/
               recursive=yes
               rsync_opts=--exclude=.hg
# and of course Ubuntu 12.04 does not support --usermap..
#,--chown={{deployuser}}:www-data
# the above goes bad because ansible_ssh_user=user has no privileges
#  local_action: command rsync -av --chown=:www-data
#                 {{app_srcdir}}
#                 {{deployuser}}@{{inventory_hostname}}:{{appdir}}/
#  when: app_srcdir is defined
# The above still goes bad because {{inventory_hostname}} is not ssh host...