Elevating user to root with Ansible

Question

How to elevate Ansible to root for running playbooks? The thing is that the server I want to provision has root access disabled and the only user that has login access has absolutely no permissions to do anything except elavating to other users.

So when I login to server manually I would do something like this - ssh lgus11@vdom7.intrn and then if I need to install something I would either do sudo - myuser or in some rare occasions sudo - and then enter the respective users password.

Unfortunately if I run my Ansible playbook I can't seem to be able to elevate the user to root.

I have a line like this in my /etc/ansible/hosts file:

[vault_server]
vdom7.intrn ansible_become=true ansible_become_user="root" ansible_become_password="<root_user_password>"

And the result I get from running the playbook is as follows:

PLAY [vault_server] ********************************************************* 

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
fatal: [vdom7.intrn] => Incorrect become password

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
           to retry, use: --limit @/home/user/main.retry

vdom7.intrn                : ok=0    changed=0    unreachable=1    failed=0

I know ansible_become_password does have some effect because previously I used to get Missing become password for an error but at the same time I know that the password I provide is correct for the user because when I use it manually it works like a charm and so I'm not really aware what am I doing wrong and how should I change playbook's run user.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 10 '21 at 16:13

1

become defaults to using sudo (see become_method). So you need to use the user's password as you would provide to sudo, not the root password.

Or you can change the become_method, e.g. to su.

edited Jul 10 '21 at 16:13

Pav K.

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answered Oct 21 '15 at 12:58

Michael Hampton

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The problem is that the user I have access to is not in sudoers and so it has no way to actually use sudo. Is there some way to do `su -` rather than use `sudo`? – Kęstutis Oct 21 '15 at 13:02
Did you click the link? Use `become_method: su`. – Michael Hampton Oct 21 '15 at 13:02
Awesome, exactly what I needed. Thanks. I guess I should've read the manual more thoroughly. – Kęstutis Oct 21 '15 at 13:08

Elevating user to root with Ansible

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