community.general.virtualbox inventory – virtualbox inventory source

Note

This inventory plugin is part of the community.general collection (version 10.1.0).

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.virtualbox.

Synopsis

  • Get inventory hosts from the local virtualbox installation.

  • Uses a YAML configuration file that ends with virtualbox.(yml|yaml) or vbox.(yml|yaml).

  • The inventory_hostname is always the ‘Name’ of the virtualbox instance.

  • Groups can be assigned to the VMs using VBoxManage. Multiple groups can be assigned by using / as a delimeter.

  • A separate parameter, enable_advanced_group_parsing is exposed to change grouping behaviour. See the parameter documentation for details.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

cache

boolean

Toggle to enable/disable the caching of the inventory’s source data, requires a cache plugin setup to work.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

Configuration:

cache_connection

string

Cache connection data or path, read cache plugin documentation for specifics.

Configuration:

cache_plugin

string

Cache plugin to use for the inventory’s source data.

Default: "memory"

Configuration:

cache_prefix

string

Prefix to use for cache plugin files/tables

Default: "ansible_inventory_"

Configuration:

cache_timeout

integer

Cache duration in seconds

Default: 3600

Configuration:

compose

dictionary

Create vars from jinja2 expressions.

Default: {}

enable_advanced_group_parsing

boolean

added in community.general 9.2.0

The default group parsing rule (when this setting is set to false) is to split the VirtualBox VM’s group based on the / character and assign the resulting list elements as an Ansible Group.

Setting enable_advanced_group_parsing=true changes this behaviour to match VirtualBox’s interpretation of groups according to https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#gui-vmgroups. Groups are now split using the , character, and the / character indicates nested groups.

When enabled, a VM that’s been configured using VBoxManage modifyvm "vm01" --groups "/TestGroup/TestGroup2,/TestGroup3" will result in the group TestGroup2 being a child group of TestGroup; and the VM being a part of TestGroup2 and TestGroup3.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

groups

dictionary

Add hosts to group based on Jinja2 conditionals.

Default: {}

keyed_groups

list / elements=dictionary

Add hosts to group based on the values of a variable.

Default: []

default_value

string

added in ansible-core 2.12

The default value when the host variable’s value is an empty string.

This option is mutually exclusive with keyed_groups[].trailing_separator.

key

string

The key from input dictionary used to generate groups

parent_group

string

parent group for keyed group

prefix

string

A keyed group name will start with this prefix

Default: ""

separator

string

separator used to build the keyed group name

Default: "_"

trailing_separator

boolean

added in ansible-core 2.12

Set this option to False to omit the keyed_groups[].separator after the host variable when the value is an empty string.

This option is mutually exclusive with keyed_groups[].default_value.

Choices:

  • false

  • true ← (default)

leading_separator

boolean

added in ansible-core 2.11

Use in conjunction with keyed_groups.

By default, a keyed group that does not have a prefix or a separator provided will have a name that starts with an underscore.

This is because the default prefix is “” and the default separator is “_”.

Set this option to False to omit the leading underscore (or other separator) if no prefix is given.

If the group name is derived from a mapping the separator is still used to concatenate the items.

To not use a separator in the group name at all, set the separator for the keyed group to an empty string instead.

Choices:

  • false

  • true ← (default)

network_info_path

string

property path to query for network information (ansible_host)

Default: "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP"

plugin

string / required

token that ensures this is a source file for the ‘virtualbox’ plugin

Choices:

  • "virtualbox"

  • "community.general.virtualbox"

query

dictionary

create vars from virtualbox properties

Default: {}

running_only

boolean

toggles showing all vms vs only those currently running

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

settings_password_file

string

provide a file containing the settings password (equivalent to –settingspwfile)

strict

boolean

If yes make invalid entries a fatal error, otherwise skip and continue.

Since it is possible to use facts in the expressions they might not always be available and we ignore those errors by default.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

use_extra_vars

boolean

added in ansible-core 2.11

Merge extra vars into the available variables for composition (highest precedence).

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

Configuration:

Examples

# file must be named vbox.yaml or vbox.yml
simple_config_file:
    plugin: community.general.virtualbox
    settings_password_file: /etc/virtulbox/secrets
    query:
      logged_in_users: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsersList
    compose:
      ansible_connection: ('indows' in vbox_Guest_OS)|ternary('winrm', 'ssh')

# add hosts (all match with minishift vm) to the group container if any of the vms are in ansible_inventory'
plugin: community.general.virtualbox
groups:
  container: "'minis' in (inventory_hostname)"

Authors

  • Unknown

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.