Difference between --ask-pass and --ask-sudo-pass in ansible?

Question

I am was trying to write some ansible playbooks and got confused with ask_pass and ask_sudo_pass. Can anyone give me a clear idea on it?

Answer 1

In an inventory one provides the connection to a host, e.g.

[local_test]
test-host ansible_ssh_user=some_user ansible_host=192.168.0.2

Note that no password or key is given in the inventory. One could provide the password of that user on the CLI by providing the argument in the command, e.g; ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory ask_pass. Reason to not place the password in the inventory is when using shared files, e.g. when placing the inventory in Git.

Now, ask_sudo_pass is meant when sudo privileges are required, e.g:

---
- hosts: localhost
  become: True # Execute whole playbook with root privileges
  tasks:
    - shell: whoami
      register: me

    - debug:
        msg: "{{ me.stdout }}"

Output:

TASK [debug] *
  ok: [localhost] => 
    msg: root

TLDR: One is for asking a password for the user, the other one is asking for the password for admin privileges