The Vagrant Ansible Local provisioner allows you to provision the guest using [Ansible](http://ansible.com) playbooks by executing **`ansible-playbook` directly on the guest machine**.
If you are not familiar with Ansible and Vagrant already, we recommend starting with the <ahref="/docs/provisioning/shell.html">shell provisioner</a>. However, if you are comfortable with Vagrant already, Vagrant is a great way to learn Ansible.
The main advantage of the Ansible Local provisioner in comparison to the [Ansible (remote) provisioner](/docs/provisioning/ansible.html) is that it does not require any additional software on your Vagrant host.
On the other hand, [Ansible must obviously be installed](https://docs.ansible.com/intro_installation.html#installing-the-control-machine) on your guest machine(s).
**Note:** By default, Vagrant will *try* to automatically install Ansible if it is not yet present on the guest machine (see the `install` option below for more details).
This page only documents the specific parts of the `ansible_local` provisioner. General Ansible concepts like Playbook or Inventory are shortly explained in the [introduction to Ansible and Vagrant](/docs/provisioning/ansible_intro.html).
The Ansible Local provisioner requires that all the Ansible Playbook files are available on the guest machine, at the location referred by the `provisioning_path` option. Usually these files are initially present on the host machine (as part of your Vagrant project), and it is quite easy to share them with a Vagrant [Synced Folder](/docs/synced-folders/).
This section lists the _specific_ options for the Ansible Local provisioner. In addition to the options listed below, this provisioner supports the [**common options** for both Ansible provisioners](/docs/provisioning/ansible_common.html).
-`:default`: Ansible is installed from the operating system package manager. This mode doesn't support `version` selection. For many platforms (e.g Debian, FreeBSD, OpenSUSE) the official package repository is used, except for the following Linux distributions:
- On Ubuntu-like systems, the latest Ansible release is installed from the `ppa:ansible/ansible` repository. The compatibility is maintained only for active long-term support (LTS) versions.
-`:pip`: Ansible is installed from [PyPI](https://pypi.python.org/pypi) with [pip](https://pip.pypa.io) package installer. With this mode, Vagrant will systematically try to [install the latest pip version](https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/#installing-with-get-pip-py). With the `:pip` mode you can optionally install a specific Ansible release by setting the [`version`](/docs/provisioning/ansible_common.html#version) option.
This can be problematic in certain scenarios, for example, when behind a proxy. It is possible to override this default command by providing an explicit command to run as part of the config using `pip_install_cmd`. For example:
-`:pip_args_only`: This mode is very similar to the `:pip` mode, with the difference that in this case no pip arguments will be automatically set by Vagrant.
Example:
```ruby
config.vm.provision "ansible_local" do |ansible|
ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
ansible.install_mode = "pip_args_only"
ansible.pip_args = "-r /vagrant/requirements.txt"
end
```
With this configuration, Vagrant will install `pip` and then execute the command
```shell
sudo pip install -r /vagrant/requirements.txt
```
The default value of `install_mode` is `:default`, and any invalid value for this option will silently fall back to the default value.
-`pip_args` (string) - When Ansible is installed via pip, this option allows the definition of additional pip arguments to be passed along on the command line (for example, [`--index-url`](https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#cmdoption-i)).
-`provisioning_path` (string) - An absolute path on the guest machine where the Ansible files are stored. The `ansible-galaxy` and `ansible-playbook` commands are executed from this directory. This is the location to place an [ansible.cfg](http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_configuration.html) file, in case you need it.
<strong>Disclaimer:</strong> This tip is not a recommendation to install galaxy roles out of the vagrant user space, especially if you rely on ssh agent forwarding to fetch the roles.
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Be careful that `ansible-galaxy` command is executed by default as vagrant user. Setting `galaxy_roles_path` to a folder like `/etc/ansible/roles` will fail, and `ansible-galaxy` will extract the role a second time in `/home/vagrant/.ansible/roles/`. Then if your playbook uses `become` to run as `root`, it will fail with a _"role was not found"_ error.
To work around that, you can use `ansible.galaxy_command` to prepend the command with `sudo`, as illustrated in the example below:
With the following configuration pattern, you can install and execute Ansible only on a single guest machine (the `"controller"`) to provision all your machines.
And finally, you also have to create an [`ansible.cfg` file](https://docs.ansible.com/intro_configuration.html#openssh-specific-settings) to fully disable SSH host key checking. More SSH configurations can be added to the `ssh_args` parameter (e.g. agent forwarding, etc.)
