"No escaped character" in inventory file

[Andrew Langhorn]

Hello,

I'm hooking up Ansible and a Vagrant VM running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. To do this, I have the following inventory file:

​

default \

 ansible_ssh_host="127.0.0.1" \

 ansible_ssh_port="2202" \

 ansible_ssh_user="vagrant" \

 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=".vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key"

​The path to the private key is relative to the directory the inventory file is in, and the private key exists. The other values - host, port and user - were populated based on the output of `vagrant ssh-config` after the Vagrant VM had booted:

✗ vagrant ssh-config

Host default

  HostName 127.0.0.1

  User vagrant

  Port 2202

  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null

  StrictHostKeyChecking no

  PasswordAuthentication no

  IdentityFile /projects/ansible/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key

  IdentitiesOnly yes

  LogLevel FATAL

Given this, I think I should be able to run ansible default -i hosts -m ping, and have a successful response from the ping module. Unfortunately, I get a lovely stack trace back:

✗ ansible default -i hosts -m ping

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/bin/ansible", line 197, in <module>

    (runner, results) = cli.run(options, args)

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/bin/ansible", line 121, in run

    inventory_manager = inventory.Inventory(options.inventory, vault_password=vault_pass)

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/inventory/__init__.py", line 128, in __init__

    self.parser = InventoryParser(filename=host_list)

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/inventory/ini.py", line 43, in __init__

    self._parse()

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/inventory/ini.py", line 47, in _parse

    self._parse_base_groups()

  File "/usr/local/Cellar/ansible/1.9.4/libexec/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/inventory/ini.py", line 108, in _parse_base_groups

    tokens = shlex.split(line)

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 279, in split

    return list(lex)

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 269, in next

    token = self.get_token()

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 96, in get_token

    raw = self.read_token()

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 191, in read_token

    raise ValueError, "No escaped character"

ValueError: No escaped character

I've had a quick look about to see what might be causing the ValueError, but I can't see much at fault. There must be something, though!

Running Ansible 1.9.4 and Python 2.7.10 on Yosemite.

Thanks in advance for any ideas,

Andrew

[Brian Coca]

I don't believe the hosts file supports \ line continuations, try this
as your hosts file:

default ansible_ssh_host="127.0.0.1" ansible_ssh_port="2202"
ansible_ssh_user="vagrant"
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=".vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key"

--
Brian Coca

[Andrew Langhorn]

In the end, putting everything on one line did the trick. I think this is because \ in Python escapes only characters, not carriage returns.

Thanks!
________________________________________
From: ansible...@googlegroups.com <ansible...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Brian Coca <bc...@ansible.com>
Sent: 29 November 2015 04:46
To: Ansible Project
Subject: Re: [ansible-project] "No escaped character" in inventory file

--
Brian Coca

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