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

user_10367371 0
Viewed 99133

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.

ansible error-handling ssh
11 Answers

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.

user_77280220

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

[inventory]
enable_plugins = yaml, ini
user_102342480

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

user_20908500

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
user_109414820

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

user_55978910

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.

user_23147370

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
user_1877690

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

user_162561540

I have the same problem:

The solution was Space issues in Token Solution was Space issues in Token

`$ ansible-playbook -i inventory/forem/setup.yml playbooks/providers/aws.yml [WARNING]: * Failed to parse /var/home/core/selfhost/inventory/forem/setup.yml with ini plugin: Invalid host pattern '---' supplied, '---' is normally a sign this is a YAML file. [WARNING]: * Failed to parse /var/home/core/selfhost/inventory/forem/setup.yml with yaml plugin: We were unable to read either as JSON nor YAML, these are the errors we got from each: JSON: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0) Syntax Error while loading YAML. could not find expected ':' The error appears to be in '/var/home/core/selfhost/inventory/forem/setup.yml': line 85, column 11, but may be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem. The offending line appears to be: $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256 62376137383864393461613561353234643230666431643935303533346631393537363564366334 ^ here [WARNING]: Unable to parse /var/home/core/selfhost/inventory/forem/setup.yml 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'

PLAY [Deploy Forem to AWS]

user_148243240

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.

user_121766980

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

user_12737870
Related