vRA 8.7 - Ansible and Extra variables

[BrettK1]

I feel like this should be the EASY part, but - we are calling an Ansible playbook to create username/password on a Linux box.

Running the playbook from another machine as such works fine:
ansible-playbook /etc/ansible/roles/foo/userplaybook.yaml -l IPADDRESS, -e "user=Username password=Password" -u logonusername -b

But with the following in our Template...
username: logonusername
password: logonusernamepassword
playbooks:
 provision:
  - /etc/ansible/roles/foo/userplaybook.yaml --extra-vars "user=Username password=Password!"

We get the following error, as if it is not passing the extra variables at all:

FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'user' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to be in '/etc/ansible/roles/foo/tasks/main.yml

We've tried sending the -e as above, and as JSON format, with extra single quotes, who knows how many other things.
Any ideas where the problem lies?  The fact we're calling the playbook is a good start, but from there, this looks like it's supposed to be the easy part, yet somehow we're not sending what we think we are?

[IAMZACH]

We encounter the same problem.

Everything works when trying to pass the vars from Ansible server, but when adding the -e flag (or --extra-vars), the input doesn't get passed into the playbook.

Anyone manages to get it to work?

[cpatidar]

@BrettK1 

Hi, 

Can you try passing the vars in the JSON string format, see below:

ansible-playbook release.yml --extra-vars '{"version":"1.23.45","other_variable":"foo"}'
ansible-playbook arcade.yml --extra-vars '{"pacman":"mrs","ghosts":["inky","pinky","clyde","sue"]}'

Referred ansible documentation: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_variables.html#json-string-format

[patrick808]

Anyone come across a solution?  I'm coming across the same issue.  Had it with 8.6.2 and still existing with 8.8.1.  In my case, we are in the middle of migrating between Ansible Tower (v3.8.3) to Ansible Automation Platform (v2.1.1).  Extra variables are successfully passed to our old Ansible Tower instance.  We use the same template (blueprint) but one newer version pointing to our new Ansible integration pointing to AAP.  So the Ansible code in the template is the same otherwise.  Extra variables are & have been in JSON format.  For whatever reason though, extra variables just aren't showing up in the playbook job in AAP.

[eswoodford]

Not sure if hostVars work that differently than extra-vars, but our ansible integration passes the password via the hostVars entry. We have it all encoded behind a pipe(|) delimiter so that it Ansible will read it all as a string, that it can parse. 

  Cloud_Ansible_1:
    type: Cloud.Ansible
    properties:
      # used to make the ansible integration optional via a checkbox.
      count: '${input.b_ansible == false ? 0 : 1}'
      host: ${resource.Cloud_Instance_1.*} 
      hostName: ${resource.Cloud_Instance_1.networks[0].address} # set hostname to IP machine's address
      osType: windows
      maxConnectionRetries: 20      
      account: 'production ansible'
      username: user # '${input.new_user_name}'
      password: userpass #'${input.a_user_password}'
      playbooks:
        provision:          
          - '${input.dev_script_path == ''OTHER'' ? input.otherAnsiblePath : input.default_script_path}'
        de-provision:
          - /home/playbooks/remove_domain_playbook.yml
      groups:
        - win
      hostVariables: |
        virtualEnvironment: AWS
        domain_oupath: ${input.domain_oupath == 'OTHER' ? input.otherOU : input.domain_oupath}
        domain: ${input.domain}
        hostname: ${input.hostname}
        accountId: ${env.projectName}
        ami_local_admin_password: ${input.admin_user_password}