Ansible inventory parameters for pem key

Question

I'm just getting started with Ansible but I'm running into various issues. The latest is my ssh keys aren't being picked up by the 'hosts' inventory file. The file's contents are:

[my host]
my-dev      ansible_ssh_host=54.79.31.51    ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/Users/dev/.ssh/dev.pem    ansible_ssh_user=ec2-user

And the error I get when executing ansible all -m ping -vvvv

<54.79.31.51> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: ec2-user
<54.79.31.51> EXEC ssh -C -tt -vvv -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o ControlPath="/tmp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r" -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o User=ec2-user -o ConnectTimeout=15 54.79.31.51 mkdir -p $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1433847411.11-150497316324808 && chmod a+rx $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1433847411.11-150497316324808 && echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1433847411.11-150497316324808
my-dev | FAILED! => {'msg': u'ERROR! SSH encountered an unknown error. The output was:\nOpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011\ndebug1: Reading configuration data /Users/dev/.ssh/config\r\ndebug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config\r\ndebug1: 
...
 No such file or directory\r\ndebug2: we did not send a packet, disable method\r\ndebug1: No more authentication methods to try.\r\nPermission denied (publickey).\r\n', 'failed': True}

I get the same error when I pass the user and private key via command line. I'm only able to successfully ping when I add the key via ssh-add.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I'm not sure exactly what the issue is but I'm wondering if it might be related to the fact that the host is already in my ~/.ssh/config file.

I got around this by simply referring to the host name as it is described in my ~/.ssh/config file. I followed the beginning instructions from here: http://benincosa.com/?p=2651