Q: ansible; dynamic remote_tmp with inventory_hostname possible in ansible.cfg?

Question

Situation:

• 3 servers with the same shared NFS folder as home folder; (No I only have to use it; No I didn't set it up that way)
• 3 different users
• ansible is used to do task on each server
• ansible 2.9.6
• controler: ubuntu 18.04; Python 3.6.9;
• server: Linux on xen; Python 2.6.9

Problem:

• default remote_tmp path in ansible.cfg not working, cause of different users, hence the default remote path ~/.ansible/tmp with mask 700 is only write for the first ansible run, but the second and third run, renders errors, cause it is not writeable
• custom remote_tmp with $RANDOM path (remote_tmp=/tmp/.ansible.$RANDOM) in ansible.cfg not working, cause $RANDOM changes during runtime and ansible cannot find files
• setting the remote_tmp path in a inventory is not possible, at least I couldn't find a documentation
• setting the remote_tmp path in a playbook is already to late.

Question:
Is there a possibility to have a customizable remote_tmp path in ansible.cfg, which is individual for each server, but stays constant during runtime? I want to avoid three seperate ansible.cfg files.

Answer 1

Well, after a good night sleep, I tired ansible_remote_tmp in the inventory and it seems to work.

inventory:

...
    t00:
      hosts:
        t00vm1:
            ansible_ssh_common_args: '-F config/ssh.cfg'
            ansible_python_interpreter: python2
            ansible_remote_tmp: /tmp/.ansible.t00vm1
...

Output:

...
TASK [debug] ***********************************************************************************************************
ok: [t00vm1] => {
    "msg": "/tmp/.mqc-ansible.t00vm1"
}
...

Hope that helps others, too.