Nimendra's Notes 🪴

05. Configuration

3 min read

ansible configuration

Controlling how Ansible behaves: precedence rules — Ansible Community Documentation

Core Idea

Ansible’s behavior lives in ansible.cfg, but several locations compete; the precedence rules decide which one wins, so know the chain before you debug settings.

  • Config file basics: ansible.cfg stores configuration, default location /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg.
  • Precedence: which location overrides which.
  • Viewing the effective config plus an annotated example covering inventory, timeouts, roles, logs, remote user, privilege escalation, host key checking, and verbosity.
  • Ansible use ansible.cfg file to store configuration.
  • Default config file location = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  • We can override ansible config file.

Precedence

Ansible looks for an ansible.cfg file in the following places, in this order:

  • File specified by the ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable
  • ./ansible.cfg (ansible.cfg in the current directory)
  • ~/.ansible.cfg (.ansible.cfg in your home directory)
  • /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg (Linux) or /usr/local/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg (*BSD)

Important

Any command-line option will override any configuration setting.

View Config

Example

Ansible Configuration Settings — Ansible Community Documentation

[defaults]
# Specify the inventory file
inventory = ./inventory
 
# Set the default module timeout (seconds)
timeout = 30
 
# Directory where Ansible keeps its roles
roles_path = ./roles
 
# Specify the location of a log file
log_path = ./ansible.log
 
# Specify the default remote user
remote_user = ansible_user
 
# Enable privilege escalation by default
become = True
become_method = sudo
 
# Retry files location
retry_files_enabled = True
retry_files_save_path = ./retries
 
# Disable host key checking
host_key_checking = False
 
# Control verbosity (uncomment for more debug information)
# debug = True
 
# Enable gathering facts
gathering = smart
fact_caching = jsonfile
fact_caching_connection = ./fact_cache
fact_caching_timeout = 86400
 
[privilege_escalation]
# Set options for privilege escalation
become = True
become_method = sudo
become_user = root
become_ask_pass = False
 
[inventory]
# Cache inventory for better performance
enable_plugins = host_list, script, yaml, ini, auto
 
[ssh_connection]
# Control SSH options
pipelining = True
ssh_args = -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s
scp_if_ssh = True
 
[callback]
# Enable stdout callback for better output
stdout_callback = yaml
# Callback plugins location
callback_plugins = ./callback_plugins
 
[retry_files]
# Enable or disable retry files
enabled = True
path = ./retries
 
[diff]
# Enable diff mode for showing changes in files or templates
always = True
context = 3
 
[logging]
# Control logging options
log_path = ./ansible.log

Important

Some settings in the ansible.cfg file can be overridden directly in the playbook or even in the inventory file or via command-line arguments. However, the scope of override depends on the specific setting.

---
- hosts: all
  become: false  # Overrides `become = True` in ansible.cfg
  tasks:
    - name: Check user
      command: whoami
 
ansible-playbook playbook.yaml --user myuser --become-method su --become-user root

Graph View