community.general.passwordstore lookup – manage passwords with passwordstore.org’s pass utility

Note

This lookup plugin is part of the community.general collection (version 5.8.3).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.passwordstore.

Synopsis

  • Enables Ansible to retrieve, create or update passwords from the passwordstore.org pass utility. It also retrieves YAML style keys stored as multilines in the passwordfile.

  • To avoid problems when accessing multiple secrets at once, add auto-expand-secmem to ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf. Where this is not possible, consider using lock=readwrite instead.

Terms

Parameter

Comments

Terms

string / required

query key.

Keyword parameters

This describes keyword parameters of the lookup. These are the values key1=value1, key2=value2 and so on in the following examples: lookup('community.general.passwordstore', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...) and query('community.general.passwordstore', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...)

Parameter

Comments

backend

string

added in community.general 5.2.0

Specify which backend to use.

Defaults to pass, passwordstore.org’s original pass utility.

gopass support is incomplete.

Choices:

  • "pass" ← (default)

  • "gopass"

Configuration:

  • INI entry:

    [passwordstore_lookup]
backend = pass

  • Variable: passwordstore_backend

backup

boolean

Used with overwrite=true. Backup the previous password in a subkey.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

create

boolean

Create the password if it does not already exist. Takes precedence over missing.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

directory

string

The directory of the password store.

Configuration:

length

integer

The length of the generated password.

Default: 16

lock

string

added in community.general 4.5.0

How to synchronize operations.

The default of write only synchronizes write operations.

readwrite synchronizes all operations (including read). This makes sure that gpg-agent is never called in parallel.

none does not do any synchronization.

Choices:

  • "readwrite"

  • "write" ← (default)

  • "none"

Configuration:

  • INI entry:

    [passwordstore_lookup]
lock = write

locktimeout

string

added in community.general 4.5.0

Lock timeout applied when lock is not none.

Time with a unit suffix, s, m, h for seconds, minutes, and hours, respectively. For example, 900s equals 15m.

Correlates with pinentry-timeout in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf, see man gpg-agent for details.

Default: "15m"

Configuration:

  • INI entry:

    [passwordstore_lookup]
locktimeout = 15m

missing

string

added in community.general 3.1.0

List of preference about what to do if the password file is missing.

If create=true, the value for this option is ignored and assumed to be create.

If set to error, the lookup will error out if the passname does not exist.

If set to create, the passname will be created with the provided length length if it does not exist.

If set to empty or warn, will return a none in case the passname does not exist. When using lookup and not query, this will be translated to an empty string.

Choices:

  • "error" ← (default)

  • "warn"

  • "empty"

  • "create"

nosymbols

boolean

use alphanumeric characters.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

overwrite

boolean

Overwrite the password if it does already exist.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

passwordstore

string

Location of the password store.

The value is decided by checking the following in order:

If set, this value is used.

If directory is set, that value will be used.

If backend=pass, then ~/.password-store is used.

If backend=gopass, then the path field in ~/.config/gopass/config.yml is used, falling back to ~/.local/share/gopass/stores/root if not defined.

returnall

boolean

Return all the content of the password, not only the first line.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

subkey

string

Return a specific subkey of the password. When set to password, always returns the first line.

Default: "password"

umask

string

added in community.general 1.3.0

Sets the umask for the created .gpg files. The first octed must be greater than 3 (user readable).

Note pass’ default value is '077'.

Configuration:

userpass

string

Specify a password to save, instead of a generated one.

Notes

Note

  • When keyword and positional parameters are used together, positional parameters must be listed before keyword parameters: lookup('community.general.passwordstore', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2) and query('community.general.passwordstore', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2)

Examples

ansible.cfg: |
  [passwordstore_lookup]
  lock=readwrite
  locktimeout=45s

playbook.yml: |
  ---

  # Debug is used for examples, BAD IDEA to show passwords on screen
  - name: Basic lookup. Fails if example/test does not exist
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test')}}"

  - name: Basic lookup. Warns if example/test does not exist and returns empty string
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test missing=warn')}}"

  - name: Create pass with random 16 character password. If password exists just give the password
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      var: mypassword
    vars:
      mypassword: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test create=true')}}"

  - name: Create pass with random 16 character password. If password exists just give the password
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      var: mypassword
    vars:
      mypassword: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test missing=create')}}"

  - name: Prints 'abc' if example/test does not exist, just give the password otherwise
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      var: mypassword
    vars:
      mypassword: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test missing=empty') | default('abc', true) }}"

  - name: Different size password
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test create=true length=42')}}"

  - name: Create password and overwrite the password if it exists. As a bonus, this module includes the old password inside the pass file
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test create=true overwrite=true')}}"

  - name: Create an alphanumeric password
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test create=true nosymbols=true') }}"

  - name: Return the value for user in the KV pair user, username
    ansible.builtin.debug:
      msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test subkey=user')}}"

  - name: Return the entire password file content
    ansible.builtin.set_fact:
      passfilecontent: "{{ lookup('community.general.passwordstore', 'example/test returnall=true')}}"

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

a password

Returned: success

Authors

  • Patrick Deelman

Hint

Configuration entries for each entry type have a low to high priority order. For example, a variable that is lower in the list will override a variable that is higher up.