How to Run Ansible Playbook using a public ssh key

Question

I'm trying to run my Ansible playbook on a remote server using a provided ssh key.

I have added the following configuration to my inventory file:

all:
  hosts:
    server1:
      ansible_host: [email protected]
      dest_dir: /root
      sample_tree: sample_tree.txt
      private_key_file: ../config/id_rsa_tf

I have referenced it in my playbook using the following:

- name: "Nightly Deploy"
  hosts: server1
  remote_user: sysuser
  tasks:
    - name: Copy test from local to remote
      tags:
        - copy
        - all
      copy:
        src: "test.tgz"
        dest: "{{ dest_dir }}/test.tgz"

I am running the playbook with the following command:

ansible-playbook --tags="copy" -v -i inventories/nightly-build.yaml playbooks/nightly-build.yaml

The error I'm getting is the following:

fatal: [server1]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to
connect to the host via ssh: Permission denied (publickey,gssapi- keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password).", "unreachable": true}

Is my private_key_file wrong in my inventory file or am I calling it wrong? and help would be great

Answer 1

This error usually occurs when there is no valid public and private key generated and setup.

Try any of the following approaches:

1. Create/edit your ansible.cfg file in your playbook directory and add a line for the full path of your key:

   [defaults]
   privatekeyfile = /Users/username/.ssh/private_key        
   

   It sets private key globally for all hosts in your playbook.

2. Add the private key to your playbook using the following line:

   vars:
     ansible_ssh_private_key_file: "/home/ansible/.ssh/id_rsa"
   

3. You can also define the private key to use directly in command line:

   ansible-playbook -vvvv --private-key=/Users/you/.ssh/your_key playbookname.yml