Using SSH-Key Authentication

To use key authentication, you must provide the SSH key file used in all the cluster servers to the hosts file, which is usually located from the light-app directory in this path: ansible/inventories/cluster_example/hosts.

To use SSH-key authentication instead of a plain text password, see the article on How To Configure SSH Key-Based Authentication on a Linux Server.

After you have configured the SSH key for authentication, you can connect from the installation server to the target with the ansible_ssh_private_key_file instead ofansible_ssh_pass, in the following format:

xxxxxxxxxx

ansible_ssh_private_key_file=<private RSA key file path>

With the default configuration, the top section of the hosts file lines are configured as below:

server00        ansible_host=rack11-server92    ansible_connection=ssh  ansible_ssh_user=root       ansible_ssh_pass=light      ansible_become_user=root        ansible_become_pass=light

As an example, assume that the SSH key for the servers is located at /root/mykey.txt. If so, change the configuration line to this:

server00        ansible_host=rack11-server92    ansible_connection=ssh  ansible_ssh_user=root       ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/root/mykey.txt      ansible_become_user=root        ansible_become_pass=light