Ansible :Unable to parse /etc/ansible/hosts as an inventory source

Question

I am new to ansible, got the below issue. I was able to ssh into my client machine .but unable to run playbook.

Getting the error below:

[WARNING]: Unable to parse /etc/ansible/hosts as an inventory source

 [WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available

 [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'

 [WARNING]: Could not match supplied host pattern, ignoring: a

here a is my group name. my hosts given below :

---------


[a]
172.31.26.93



[all:vars]

ansible_user=vagrant
ansible_ssh_pass=vagrant


 ansible_ssh_host=172.31.26.93
 ansible_ssh_port=22
 ansible_ssh_user='ansibleuser'
 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/home/ansibleuser/.ssh

------- my playbook file given below ----

- hosts: a
  tasks:
  - name: create a directory
    file: path=/home/ansiblesuser/www state=directory

This is the first time I am getting this issue.

Vetchling

Hi Mani, welcome to SO! You didn't specify the file that contains your group name, nor the version of ansible you are using. Although if it is /etc/ansible/hosts and you have a modern version of ansible, you can check to see what ansible sees about that file using ansible-inventory -i /path/to/the/inventory/file --list – Drat

Separately, ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/home/ansibleuser/.ssh is incorrect as that points to a directory, and not to a file -- unless you have for some terrible reason named your file as .ssh in ansibleuser's home directory – Drat

I changed the ssh_priavtekey_file to /home/ansibleuser/.ssh/id_rsa. and tried the the commond ansible-inventory -i /path/to/the/inventory/file --list , got below response ... – Vetchling

{ "_meta": { "hostvars": { "172.31.26.93": { "ansible_ssh_host": "172.31.26.93", "ansible_ssh_pass": "vagrant", "ansible_ssh_port": 22, "ansible_ssh_private_key_file": "/home/ansibleuser/.ssh/id_rsa", "ansible_ssh_user": "ansibleuser", "ansible_user": "vagrant" } } }, "a": { "hosts": [ "172.31.26.93" ] }, "all": { "children": [ "a", "ungrouped" ] }, "ungrouped": {} } – Vetchling

ansible version is " 2.4.6.0" and he file that contains your group name is "hosts" – Vetchling

Answer 1

i had the same issue, the plugins ini and yaml were not enable in the ansible.cfg :

[inventory]
enable_plugins = yaml, ini

Disproportion

You just saved me a solution for weeks of effort. I could add a medal to this one. If i had known what to search for i would have found it faster, lol. keyword = multiple hosts, combine dynamic and static hosts. e.g. enable_plugins = aws_ec2, yaml, ini, inventory=./inventory and all inventory files, including aws_ec2.yml inside inventory/ – Sixth

Answer 2

Before running the playbook just run the following command

ansible all --list-hosts

If the above error persists then go to /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg and edit the inventory path which points to your specific host file.

Groundless

Answer 3

I suddenly experienced the same issue with an inventory that was many years in use and hadn't changed recently. It turned out I enabled a plugin which caused this issue.

I enabled the plugin vmware_vm_inventory which was the source of the message. This showed up by running ansible-playbook -vvvv <host>

I'd figured I should define the plugin in an ansible.cfg file that is present in the folder where I run playbooks that use this plugin and leave it out of the /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

Derr

Answer 4

Host file with no read permissions caused the following error message:

[WARNING]: Unable to parse /etc/ansible/hosts as an inventory source
[WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that
the implicit localhost does not match 'all'

Solution: change permissions

sudo chmod 744 /etc/ansible/hosts 

In another occasion I got an error message due to an incorrect formatting of the hosts file:

[WARNING]:  * Failed to parse /etc/ansible/hosts with yaml plugin: YAML
inventory has invalid structure, it should be a dictionary, got: <class
'ansible.parsing.yaml.objects.AnsibleUnicode'>
[WARNING]:  * Failed to parse /etc/ansible/hosts with ini plugin:
/etc/ansible/hosts:3: Expected key=value host variable assignment, got: ;
[WARNING]: Unable to parse /etc/ansible/hosts as an inventory source
[WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available

and I fixed the issue by correcting the format error.

As suggested in another answer check if hosts are available with

ansible all --list-hosts

Also check the actual location of the inventory file in the Ansible configuration file ansible.cfg.

Michikomichon

Mine was extra "/" at start of path "roles/jenkins/inventory/hosts.ini" was enough – Nato

@Nato yes sometimes it's not easy to figure out what's wrong, Ansible error messages can be quite cryptic – Michikomichon

Answer 5

If you are still having this issue when you run

ansible-playbook -i path/to/inventory/file playbook.yml

Simply create an empty ansible.cfg file in the directory where you have your playbook.

Glossal

Answer 6

Using ansible version ansible 2.9.27 able to resolve by giving complete (absolute path) for me error is like below

[WARNING]: Unable to parse /root/hosts as an inventory source [WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all' [WARNING]: Could not match supplied host pattern, ignoring: all

Use following command

ansible-playbook -i /etc/ansible/hosts showfiles.yml

Thinkable

Answer 7

The following solved the problem for me:

1. Go to the root directory /
2. cd etc or mkdir etc and cd etc
3. mkdir ansible then cd ansible
4. vi hosts (then add the hosts)
5. chmod 777 hosts.
6. Check ansible all -m ping

Cutthroat

He was asking about dynamic inventory with script. He was not asking about manual host update – Poppy

A text file should not be chmod 777. It does not need execute permissions. – Limpid

Read permissions should suffice. – Michikomichon

Answer 8

Centos 7

this was causing above error: ansible-playbook -i host_test -v tasks.yml

this fixed it: ansible-playbook -i hosttest -v tasks.yml

Krissy

Answer 9

You'll see this error if the file doesn't exist on disk as well.

This will be in the -vvvv log:

Skipping due to inventory source not existing or not being readable by the current user

Wallacewallach

Answer 10

Removing the spaces around the = worked for me, Ansible managed to parse my host.ini file.

Jair

Answer 11

The problem with mine was that, I try to commen someof the configuration. Which creates the problem. Just remove it and works fine.

I know its not specific solution of problem here, but just write it down to point out possible cause for other. Thanks

Thaler

Answer 12

if your command ansible all --list-hosts works as expected then you might need to specify your host file. for example:

ansible all -i /etc/ansible/hosts -m copy -a 'src=suhaily.txt dest=/home/devops/'

this occurs if you are trying to execute command from some other location than /etc/ansible/

Riba