Ansible Role: Hosts Aliases

This Ansible role creates SSH and VSCode Remote SSH aliases for hosts in your inventory, making it easier to connect to remote servers. It adds these aliases to a user's bash profile on a management host.

Features

• Add all host to an bash_hosts_aliases
• Alias of ssh access to the host
• Alias of editor access to the host (optional)

Screenshot

Requirements

• Ansible 2.1 or higher
• A management host where the aliases will be created (typically your local machine)
• Remote hosts that you want to connect to via SSH and VSCode Remote SSH

Role Variables

Required management host information

Variable	Type	Description	Default
user	str	Username on the management host
host	str	Hostname of the management host
home	str	Home directory path on the management host

Optional variables with defaults:

Variable	Type	Description	Default
bash	str	Bash profile file to modify	".bashrc"
bash_hosts_aliases	str	File to store the aliases	".bash_hosts_aliases"
editor_path	str	Path to the VSCode executable	"code"
create_editor_aliases	bool	Whether to create VSCode aliases	true
comment	str	Comment for the aliases file	"Hosts Aliases"

Dependencies

None

New Method

This role now directly uses Ansible's host variables instead of requiring separate lists. This simplifies configuration and makes the role more maintainable.

The role now uses: • ansible_play_hosts_all instead of dev_hostnames • hostvars[item].ansible_host instead of dev_ips • hostvars[item].alias instead of dev_alias • hostvars[item].vspath instead of dev_vspaths • hostvars[item].ansible_user instead of dev_ansible_ssh_users This eliminates the need for pre-tasks that extract values from the inventory into separate lists, making your playbooks simpler and more maintainable.

Example Playbook

- name: Create host aliases on management host
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    management_user: "you"
    management_host: "your-mac"
    management_home: "/Users/you/"
  tasks:
    - name: Include hosts aliases role
      include_role:
        name: ansible-role-hosts-aliases
      vars:
        user: "{{ management_user }}"
        host: "{{ management_host }}"
        home: "{{ management_home }}"
        bash: ".bashrc"
        bash_hosts_aliases: ".bash_hosts_aliases"
        create_editor_aliases: true

Inventory Example

Here's an example inventory file format that works with this role:

[all]
ansible     ansible_host="192.168.1.10"   alias="a"     vspath="/home/ansible/ansible"
docker      ansible_host="192.168.1.11"   alias="d"     vspath="/data/docker"
homepage    ansible_host="192.168.1.12"   alias="hp"    vspath="/opt/homepage/config"

[all:vars]
ansible_user="ansible"

Testing

The role includes a test playbook and inventory that can be used to verify functionality. To run the tests:

cd ansible-role-hosts-aliases
ansible-playbook -i tests/inventory.ini tests/test.yml

The test creates bash aliases in a temporary directory to avoid modifying your actual bash profile during testing.

cat /tmp/test_bash_hosts_aliases

After running the role, you'll have aliases like:

# .bashrc_hosts_aliases
# Hosts Aliases

# ansible ---- 192.168.1.10
alias ssha='ssh ansible@ansible'
alias vsa='code --folder-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+ansible@ansible/home/ansible/ansible"'

# docker ---- 192.168.1.11
alias sshd='ssh ansible@docker'
alias vsd='code --folder-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+ansible@docker/data/docker"'

# homepage ---- 192.168.1.12
alias sshhp='ssh ansible@homepage'
alias vshp='code --folder-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+ansible@homepage/opt/homepage/config"'

License

MIT

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Author Information

Lucas Janin

• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@lucas3d
• Website: https://www.lucasjanin.com
• GitHub: github.com/lucasjanin
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lucasjanin