Ansible aws_ec2 inventory plugin - dynamic boto_profile

Question

I am using the aws_ec2 inventory plugin and would like to pass the boto_profile in as a var at runtime.

I am trying to run the following command:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --extra-vars profile=foo

Inside my aws_ec2.yml plugin file I have:

boto_profile: "{{ profile }}"

This returns the error:

The config profile ({{ profile }}) could not be found

I am able to use the profile var inside my playbook. I am using the ec2 module with profile: "{{ profile }}" That seems to work if I define a static inventory.

Is it possible to pass the profile var into the dynamic inventory file?

Answer 1

I'm using this in GitLab CI/CD and had the same issue, however you can look up the env variables in the dynamic inventory like this:

plugin: amazon.aws.aws_ec2
aws_access_key: "{{ lookup('env','AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID') }}"
aws_secret_key: "{{ lookup('env','AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY') }}"
regions:
    - eu-central-1
groups:
    webservers: "'app-server' in tags.Type"

and I cen set this up in the CI/CD under variables: and this is passed to docker container.