Set host name for Vagrant VM in Ansible

Question

For testing Ansible, I've set up a Vagrant VM which can be provisioned with vagrant provision, given

config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
  ansible.playbook = "site.yml"
end

in the Vagrantfile. This works when I set hosts to all,

- hosts: all
  sudo: true
  roles:
    - common
    - ssl
    - webserver

Alternatively, the file

.vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory

which is generated by Vagrant itself says

default ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222

meaning that the name of the Vagrant VM is default. Hence,

- hosts: default

also does what I want. However, I'd like to have a more specific name for the VM (like vagrant, for example).

Is there a way to change that name to something else?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:33

The trick is to define the VM (here with 2 VMs production and staging):

config.vm.define "production" do |production|
  production.vm.hostname = "production.example.com"
end

config.vm.define "staging" do |staging|
  staging.vm.hostname = "staging.example.com"
end

Then vagrant generates the following inventory:

production ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222
staging ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2200

See also this answer.

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 22 '16 at 06:16

To change only the inventory hostname in .vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory, use:

config.vm.define "myvm"

This will generate the following:

# Generated by Vagrant
myvm ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222

Thus, ansible inventory_hostname will become myvm.

If you want to also change the hostname of the machine, use:

config.vm.define "myvm" do |myvm|
  myvm.vm.hostname = "myvm.example.com"
end

Frederic Henri · Answer 3 · 2017-07-03T18:43:43.523

2

You can read The inventory file from the vagrant doc

If you want to change the name of the VM, you could have something like

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.define "host1"
  config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "site.yml"

which will produce the inventory file

# Generated by Vagrant

host1 ansible_ssh_host=...

Note that vagrant also proposed a static inventory option which will allow you to write your own inventory file and reference with the inventory_path option

edited Jul 03 '17 at 18:43

answered Sep 09 '15 at 16:24

Frederic Henri

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This only only changes the `hostname` within the VM, not the contents of `.vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory` and hence not the name Ansible refers to. – Nico Schlömer Sep 09 '15 at 16:39

Set host name for Vagrant VM in Ansible

3 Answers3