Like Vagrant's default SSH behaviors (e.g ssh or ssh-config commands),
the Ansible provisioner should by default not modify or read the user
known host file (e.g. ~/.ssh/known_hosts).
Given that `UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null` SSH option is usually combined
with `StrictHostKeyChecking=no`, it seems quite reasonable to bind the
activation/disactivation of both options to `host_key_checking`
provisioner attribute.
For the records, a discussion held in Ansible-Development mailing list
clearly confirmed that there is no short-term plan to adapt Ansible to
offer an extra option or change the behavior of
ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING. For this reason, the current implementation
seems reasonable and should be stable on the long run.
Close#3900
Related References:
- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ansible-devel/iuoZs1oImNs/6xrj5oa1CmoJ
- https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/9442
- force `--connection=ssh` (any other modes like paramiko or smart are not
supported)
- give the highest priority to `raw_arguments` for sake of simplicity (in
usage, in code and in documentation)
- fix position of the `--limit` argument (the generated inventory could be
shadowed by `raw_arguments`, while ansible.limit was able to override
`raw_arguments`
ref #3396
When `--connection` argument is not specified, Ansible will use the
'smart' mode, which can either use `ssh` or `paramiko` transports,
depending of the version of OpenSSH available. If OpenSSH version is new
enough to support ControlPersist technology, `ssh` will be used.
See also http://docs.ansible.com/intro_configuration.html#transport.
In order to support some advanced features of Vagrant (e.g. multiple ssh
private key identities or ssh forwarding), the Ansible provisioner
already must force `ssh` connection mode.
Having to deal with the possible fallback to `paramiko` increase the
burden of special cases that Ansible provisioner must handle, without
any added value, as Vagrant is based on OpenSSH and its users are
usually using modern operating systems.
With this change, the Ansible provisioner will officially only support
`ssh`. It will still be possible to switch to another connection mode
via `raw_arguments`, but it will breach the "contract", and no
(community) support can be expected in such use case.
ref #3900, #3396
Mitchell Hashimoto
Seth Vargo
Gilles Cornu