⚠️ WARNING: This role is not compatible to newer Ansible releases because they do not allow to extract the ssh config file and might not use the ssh connection plugin at all. :warning:

This role helps with managing SSH known hosts files. If you do not need the functionality to overwrite offending SSH keys (variable force_overwrite_ssh_known_hosts), then you may have a look at OpenSSH's option StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new instead.

Details

• SSH host keys will be added to user's SSH known hosts file if is not present in any SSH known hosts file.
• Nothing is done if SSH host keys are present in any SSH known hosts file.
• The role will fail if an offending SSH key has been found in any SSH known hosts file and variable force_overwrite_ssh_known_hosts is no.
• If an offending SSH key has been found in any SSH known hosts file, but force_overwrite_ssh_known_hosts is yes, then femove old SSH keys will be removed and the offending ones will be added to user's SSH known hosts file.
• The SSH host key is matched against all known hosts files (SSH's options globalknownhostsfile and userknownhostsfile) which are configured for Ansible's SSH connection.
• SSH host keys will be added to the first known hosts file listed for the user (userknownhostsfile).
• If multiple known hosts files have been configured in SSH, then SSH keys will be added to the first user known hosts file. This behaviour matches OpenSSH's source file sshconnect.c, which says that if host keys get added, then they get added to the first file (aka user_hostfiles[0]) in the list of hosts files.

Tested OS images

• Cloud images of Debian 10 (Buster) [amd64]
• Generic cloud image of CentOS 7 (Core) [amd64]
• Generic cloud image of CentOS 8 (Core) [amd64]
• Ubuntu cloud image of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) [amd64]
• Ubuntu cloud image of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) [amd64]

Available on Ansible Galaxy: jm1.known_hosts

None.

None.

- hosts: all
  connection: local
  serial: 1 # Prevent concurrent writes to known hosts file
  roles:
    - name: Manage SSH known hosts
      role: jm1.known_hosts
      # Optional: Pass variables to role
      vars:
        force_overwrite_ssh_known_hosts: yes

For instructions on how to run Ansible playbooks have look at Ansible's Getting Started Guide.

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later

See LICENSE.md to see the full text.

Jakob Meng @jm1 (github, galaxy, web)