Create EC2 instance by Ansible with aws credentials - amazon-web-services

Question

I followed these 3 guides:
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/guide_aws.html
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/ec2_module.html
https://gist.github.com/tristanfisher/e5a306144a637dc739e7
and I wrote this Ansible play
---
- hosts: localhost
connection: local
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- include_vars: aws_credentials.yml
- name: Creating EC2 Ubuntu instance
ec2:
instance_type: t1.micro
image: ami-86e0ffe7
region: us-west-2
key_name: my-aws-key
zone: us-west-2a
vpc_subnet_id: subnet-04199d61
group_id: sg-cf6736aa
assign_public_ip: yes
count: 1
wait: true
volumes:
- device_name: /dev/sda1
volume_type: gp2
volume_size: 10
instance_tags:
Name: ansible-test
Project: test
Ansible: manageable
register: ec2
then I run ansible-playbook create-ec2.yml -v --private-key ~/.ssh/my-key --vault-password-file ~/.password/to_ansible_vault
and I was getting this message
PLAY [localhost] ***************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] ************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {"ansible_facts": {"ec2_access_key": "decrypted_acces_key_XXXXX", "ec2_secret_key": "decrypted_secret_key_XXXXX"}, "changed": false}
TASK [Creating EC2 Ubuntu instance] ********************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "No handler was ready to authenticate. 1 handlers were checked. ['HmacAuthV4Handler'] Check your credentials"}
NO MORE HOSTS LEFT *************************************************************
[WARNING]: Could not create retry file 'create-ec2.retry'. [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ''
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1
when I ran ansible-vault view aws_credentials.yml --vault-password-file ~/.password/to_ansible_vault I got readable content of encrypted aws_credentials.yml,
something like this :
---
ec2_access_key: "XXXXX"
ec2_secret_key: "XXXXX"
Also when I used plain aws_credentials.yml, it doesn't work. Only when I export my credentials, it works without any failure.
Could somebody help me, how can I write playbook for creating ec2 instance with credentials stored in encrypted file?

Answer 1

I think you should supply your keys directly to ec2 module in this case.
Try this:
- name: Creating EC2 Ubuntu instance
ec2:
aws_access_key: "{{ ec2_access_key }}"
aws_secret_key: "{{ ec2_secret_key }}"
instance_type: t1.micro
image: ami-86e0ffe7
region: us-west-2
...
The code suggests that it only checks module's arguments and environment variables, not host variables.

Answer 2

Also you can export your AWS API keys to OS environment variables, like a:
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXXXX
In that case in Ansible scenario you need to set:
- name: Creating EC2 Ubuntu instance
ec2:
aws_access_key: "{{ lookup('env', 'AWS_ACCESS_KEY') }}"
aws_secret_key: "{{ lookup('env', 'AWS_SECRET_KEY') }}"
instance_type: t1.micro
image: ami-86e0ffe7
region: us-west-2