Introduction
In today's episode of Ansible Pilot, I'm Luca Berton, and we'll delve into Ansible troubleshooting, focusing on the common error "Failed to connect to the host via SSH: localhost port 22." This error often occurs when testing your code on your local machine using the ansible_connection local parameter.
Understanding the Error
The exact error message you might encounter in the terminal is:
``bash
fatal: [localhost]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via SSH: ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused", "unreachable": true}
`
This error is a clear indication that Ansible failed to establish an SSH connection to the localhost on port 22.
Live Demo
Let's jump into a live Playbook to reproduce the Ansible connection failed problem and fix it in the inventory file.
Error Code: ping.yml
`yaml
---
- name: ping module Playbook
hosts: all
tasks:
- name: test connection
ansible.builtin.ping:
`
Error Execution
Executing the playbook with the error:
`bash
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory ping.yml
PLAY [ping module Playbook] *
TASK [Gathering Facts]
fatal: [localhost]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via SSH: ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused", "unreachable": true}
PLAY RECAP **
localhost : ok=0 changed=0 unreachable=1 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
`
Fix Code: ping.yml
`yaml
---
- name: ping module Playbook
hosts: all
tasks:
- name: test connection
ansible.builtin.ping:
`
Fix Execution
Executing the fixed playbook:
``bash
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory ping.yml
PLAY [ping module Playbook] *
TASK [Gathering Facts]
[WARNING]: Platform darwin on host localhost is using the discovered Python interpreter
at /opt/homebrew/bin/python3.10, but future installation of another Python interpreter
could change the meaning of that path. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-
core/2.13/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
ok: [localhost]
TASK [test conne