Ansible beginner - List object has no attribute 'name'

Question

I have an issue with looping on vars,

- hosts: all
  become: yes
  vars:
    user: 
      - name: "neito"
        pubkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm.pub') }}"
        privkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm') }}"
  tasks:
    - name: "Add SSH public key"
      authorized_key:
        user: "{{ item.name }}"
        key: "{{ item.pubkey }}"
      loop:
        - "{{ user }}"

when running this playbook I have the following error : The error was: 'list object' has no attribute 'name'

The {{ item.name }} seems to be undefined for Ansible, I guess I'm missing something obvious here but I can't find what. (I was following this get started post

Edit 1 :

By declaring the vars like following it works :

vars:
    user:
      {
        name: "neito",
        pubkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm.pub') }}",
        privkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm') }}",
      }

Could someone still point me out why the first syntax didn't work?

NeitoFR · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-14 13:12:31Z

7

The problem was the - dash in front of the "{{ user }}":

loop:
  - "{{ user }}"

Needs to be :

loop: "{{ user }}"

answered Nov 14, 2020 at 13:12

NeitoFR

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1 Comment

Vladimir Botka Over a year ago

This answer points to the real problem. This one shall be the accepted answer.

β.εηοιτ.βε · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-14 15:53:10Z

5

Please check the loops documentation:

You can define the list in a variables file, or in the ‘vars’ section of your play, then refer to the name of the list in the task:
loop: "{{ somelist }}"

If you modify your original task to:

tasks:
  - name: "Add SSH public key"
    authorized_key:
      user: "{{ item.name }}"
      key: "{{ item.pubkey }}"
    loop: "{{ user }}"

you should be good to go.

edited Nov 14, 2020 at 15:53

β.εηοιτ.βε

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answered Nov 14, 2020 at 13:07

ilias-sp

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3 Comments

Vladimir Botka Over a year ago

This answer doesn't show the reason for the problem. The code works though.

ilias-sp Over a year ago

Since documentation suggests that using - "{{ a list }}" is not the proper way, i guess there is no point analyzing it any further. Perhaps the loop is more strict on the syntax of the input variable, than with_items is.

Zeitounator Over a year ago

with_items: "{{ whatever }}" is equivalent to loop: "{{ whatever | flatten(levels=1) }}". This is why it will work if you pass a list of lists. Loop will not accept that on its own. See docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/…

Czaporka · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-14 13:12:19Z

0

Originally you defined user as a 1-element list. The little dash (-) at the beginning denoted an element of a list.

user:
  - name: "neito"
    pubkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm.pub') }}"
    privkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm') }}"
# in YAML, the below is equivalent to the above
user:
  [
    {
      name: "neito",
      pubkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm.pub') }}",
      privkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm') }}"
    }
  ]

The brackets are alternative syntax to the dashes. On a similar note, curly braces are also an alternative to specifying each property on a new line, with increased indentation. So you could rewrite your second example in the following way:

user:
  name: "neito"
  pubkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm.pub') }}"
  privkey: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/vsphere_vm') }}" """)

Thanks to the fact that the brackets and curly braces are also valid in YAML, you can actually parse JSON files as YAML and it will work 100% (but not the other way around).

answered Nov 14, 2020 at 13:12

Czaporka

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3 Comments

NeitoFR Over a year ago

Thanks for the detailed explanation and extra infos.

Vladimir Botka Over a year ago

This answer does not solve the problem. In addition to this, the proposed dictionary does not serve the purpose of iterating the users.

Czaporka Over a year ago

@VladimirBotka thanks for your feedback. I agree that iterating users would probably make sense here, but it wasn't clear from the question that OP wanted user to be a list (perhaps in such case it should have been called users?). If you take a look at the tutorial OP is following, that tutorial uses loop: ...- '"{{ user }}"' all over the place.

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