Ansible, nb_inventory and ansible_host_dns_name - are we missing something?

[astekolshchikov]

Hello All!

I'm using nb_inventory as dynamic inventory source and fall into somewhat unclear or mis-understanding behavior.
At first i try to explain what we have and what we expect as 'right' behavior.

We widely using ssh jump hosts and ~/.ssh/config rules based on host names. Something like

Host jumphost1 A.B.C.D
    User user1
    Hostname jumphost1.mydomain.local
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/jumphost1_user1_identity.rsa
Host group1-* !jumphost1 !A.B.C.D !jumphost1.mydomain.local
    ProxyJump jumphost1
    User user1
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/jumphost1_user1_identity.rsa

So, we can easily call #ssh group1-host1 and connection proceeds through jumphost1.

We want ansible to do same - establish connection on hostname basis through jumphosts.

We have hosts in netbox, primary IPs assigned to interfaces.
We have ansible inventory looked up to netbox, and we have in this inventory ansible_host_dns_name set to true.

So, as described in netbox inventory plugin manual, this should be resulted in ansible connects to hosts using dns names.

BUT! Ansible still trying to connect such hosts directly by IP addresses.

The only way we can force ansible to use dns names was making a lot of host_vars inventory files such as /inventory/host_vars/group1-host1.yml containing ansible_host: "{{ dns_name }}"

This totally disappoints us due to we need to create /inventory/host_vars/groupN-hostM.yml for each new host.

Are we missing something?

ansible [core 2.13.13]
ansible-galaxy collection netbox.netbox 3.18.0
NetBox Community v4.2.4

[sc68cal]

Do you by chance also have oob_ip_as_primary_ip set?

[astekolshchikov]

Do you by chance also have oob_ip_as_primary_ip set?

No.

[sc68cal]

Ok, just as a quick test, what about disabling your ~/.ssh/config just to make sure it's not something with how that is being processed by Ansible? Like, I am wondering if we are indeed setting ansible_host to the DNS name and then it's getting transformed back into an IP by the ~/.ssh/config entries?

Either that or can you provide us with an ansible -m setup <host> while using the netbox inventory plugin and print out what it shows for ansible_host ?