CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ansibleyamlansible-inventory
bsd-boo
bsd-boo

Reputation: 23

Why Ansible isn't able to parse asterisk in inventory file?

$cat inventory.yaml
---
server1:
  hosts:
    macbsd1
  vars:
    ansible_user: unixgirl
    ansible_password: *whatever
    ansible_connection: ssh
    ansible_sudo_pass: *whatever

$ ansible-playbook test.yaml -i inventory.yaml -v
Using ansible.cfg as config file
[WARNING]:  * Failed to parse inventory.yaml with auto plugin: Syntax Error while loading YAML.
found undefined alias  
The error appears to be in 'inventory.yaml': line 6, column 19, 
but may be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.  
The offending line appears to be:    vars:     ansible_password: *whatever

The inventory doesn't get parsed and results in error, but if I remove the asterisk, it works. Asterisk on the username field also results in error.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 636

Answers (1)

pynexj
pynexj

Reputation: 20688

In YAML, *identifier is used to reference to a previously defined alias (or anchor in YAML's terminology).

For example:

foo: &HELLO hello world    # defines an alias which has "hello world"
bar: *HELLO                # dereference the alias

To input a literal string which starts with * you can use double/single quotes:

bar: "*HELLO"    # Double quotes supports escapes like \n so use it carefully
# OR
bar: '*HELLO'    # I prefer single quotes

Upvotes: 2

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