Ansible: Prompting variables for roles

Question

I have a simple ansible Playbook called setup.yml which looks basically like this (simplified):

- hosts: my-server-to-setup
  remote_user: [REDACTED]
  become: yes
  #vars_prompt:
  #  - name: "zbxusername"
  #    prompt: "Zabbix Username"
  #    private: no    
  #  - name: "zbxpw"
  #     prompt: "Zabbix Passwort"
  #     private: yes
      roles:
       - basic
  #     - zabbix

The zabbix role requires a username and a password to acccess the zabbix host server. The credentials differ, every user has his own account.

If I want to install the zabbix role, I need to uncomment the vars_prompt section because ansible doesn't allow prompting from within a role.

Is there a better way to do this? The current way can possibly leave important variables undefined which would result in a playbook failure.

Answer 1

Create a playbook top.yml that imports playbooks basic.yml and zabix.yml. Run the imported playbooks selectively with the tags.

ansible-playbook -t basic top.yml
ansible-playbook -t zabix top.yml

playbook top.yml

- name: Run basic
  import_playbook: basic.yml
  tags: [basic, never]

- name: Run zabix
  import_playbook: zabix.yml
  tags: [zabix, never]

playbook basic.yml

- hosts: my-server-to-setup
  remote_user: [REDACTED]
  become: yes
  roles:
    - basic

playbook zabix.yml

- hosts: my-server-to-setup
  remote_user: [REDACTED]
  become: yes
  vars_prompt:
    - name: "zbxusername"
      prompt: "Zabbix Username"
      private: no    
    - name: "zbxpw"
      prompt: "Zabbix Passwort"
      private: yes
  roles:
    - zabbix

---

Notes

The tag never might be useful not to accidentally run both roles. Without any tag specified none of the imported playbooks will run. There will be no action as a result of the following command.

ansible-playbook top.yml