ansible/docsite/rst/become.rst

Become (Privilege Escalation)

Ansible can use existing privilege escalation systems to allow a user to execute tasks as another.

Topics

Become

Before 1.9 Ansible mostly allowed the use of sudo and a limited use of su to allow a login/remote user to become a different user and execute tasks, create resources with the 2nd user's permissions. As of 1.9 become supersedes the old sudo/su, while still being backwards compatible. This new system also makes it easier to add other privilege escalation tools like pbrun (Powerbroker), pfexec and others.

New directives

become

equivalent to adding sudo: or su: to a play or task, set to 'true'/'yes' to activate privilege escalation

become_user

equivalent to adding 'sudo_user:' or 'su_user:' to a play or task, set to user with desired privileges

become_method

at play or task level overrides the default method set in ansible.cfg, set to 'sudo'/'su'/'pbrun'/'pfexec'/'doas'

New ansible_ variables

Each allows you to set an option per group and/or host

ansible_become

equivalent to ansible_sudo or ansible_su, allows to force privilege escalation

ansible_become_method

allows to set privilege escalation method

ansible_become_user

equivalent to ansible_sudo_user or ansible_su_user, allows to set the user you become through privilege escalation

ansible_become_pass

equivalent to ansible_sudo_pass or ansible_su_pass, allows you to set the privilege escalation password

New command line options

--ask-become-pass

ask for privilege escalation password

--become,-b

run operations with become (no password implied)

--become-method=BECOME_METHOD

privilege escalation method to use (default=sudo), valid choices: [ sudo | su | pbrun | pfexec | doas ]

--become-user=BECOME_USER

run operations as this user (default=root)

sudo and su still work!

Old playbooks will not need to be changed, even though they are deprecated, sudo and su directives will continue to work though it is recommended to move to become as they may be retired at one point. You cannot mix directives on the same object though, Ansible will complain if you try to.

Become will default to using the old sudo/su configs and variables if they exist, but will override them if you specify any of the new ones.

Note

Privilege escalation methods must also be supported by the connection plugin used, most will warn if they do not, some will just ignore it as they always run as root (jail, chroot, etc).

Note

Methods cannot be chained, you cannot use 'sudo /bin/su -' to become a user, you need to have privileges to run the command as that user in sudo or be able to su directly to it (the same for pbrun, pfexec or other supported methods).

Note

Privilege escalation permissions have to be general, Ansible does not always use a specific command to do something but runs modules (code) from a temporary file name which changes every time. So if you have '/sbin/service' or '/bin/chmod' as the allowed commands this will fail with ansible.

Mailing List

Questions? Help? Ideas? Stop by the list on Google Groups

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#ansible IRC chat channel