moreinhardt / vbox-inventory

A dynamic inventory script for Ansible and VirtualBox.

vbox-inventory

A dynamic inventory script for Ansible and VirtualBox.

What it does

Lets you run Ansible against virtual machines without having to check addresses or maintain the Ansible hosts file.

How it works

The script uses VBoxManage to fetch the name and IP address of each currently running VM and provides these in a JSON format palatable to Ansible.

How to use it

Here's one way to set up a combination of static and dynamic inventories:

• Create a directory to hold your host data:

    mkdir ~/ansible_inventory
  

• Add this line to your .bash_profile:

    export ANSIBLE_HOSTS=~/ansible_inventory
  

• Put your static host file(s) and the script in ~/ansible_inventory

• Make the script executable:

    chmod 0755 ~/ansible_inventory/vbox_inventory.py
  

• Test:

    ~/ansible_inventory/vbox_inventory.py --list
    ansible all --list-hosts
  

Limitations

• Gets the address of the first interface, multihomed hosts may not work as expected.
• Only running VMs are listed.
• Guest additions need to be installed.

Customizing

• The default group name is vbox. Modify the value of constant VBOX_GROUP to change it.

• You can add host variables to constant HOSTVAR_TEMPLATE. For example, to use the root account to log in:

    HOSTVAR_TEMPLATE = {'ansible_ssh_user': 'root'}