Ansible "missing sudo password" even with passwordless sudo enabled

I have in my sudoers file

ALL            ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Which allows anyone to use sudo without entering a password. And I confirmed that I can sudo without a password when I ssh into the machine.

Yet when I attempt to run a playbook on it, I get an error "missing sudo password".

The command I'm using to run is

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yaml common_install.yaml --limit vpn.lan.example.com -vvv

I've run the same command, limiting it to a different host, that has the same sudo rule, and are both running Ubuntu 20.04, and it works on that. But won't work on this host.

Why won't it work?

Solution 1:

It is possible you have not populated the group_vars or host_vars directory(s) with the username and password values/files.

An example of a group_vars dir:

nodes.yml

ansible_port: 22
ansible_user: username
ansible_password: password
ansible_connection: ssh
ansible_become_pass: otherPassword

Note: the variables in the group_vars/host_vars directory(s) contain files with variables only do not include the vars: keyword, or your other variables will be ignored.