Talk more about transports in documentation.

pull/3444/merge
Michael DeHaan 12 years ago
parent 2cb7c30834
commit 1ead97098d

@ -308,12 +308,50 @@ Now run a live command on all of your nodes:
$ ansible all -a "/bin/echo hello"
Congratulations. You've just contacted your nodes with Ansible. It's
now time to read some of the more real-world :doc:`examples`, and explore
soon going to be time to read some of the more real-world :doc:`examples`, and explore
what you can do with different modules, as well as the Ansible
:doc:`playbooks` language. Ansible is not just about running commands, it
also has powerful configuration management and deployment features. There's more to
explore, but you already have a fully working infrastructure!
A note about Connection (Transport) Modes
`````````````````````````````````````````
Ansible has two major forms of SSH transport implemented, 'ssh' (OpenSSH) and 'paramiko'. Paramiko is a python
SSH implementation and 'ssh' simply calls OpenSSH behind the scenes. There are additionally 'fireball' (an accelerated
remote transport), 'local', and 'chroot' connection modes in Ansible that don't use SSH, but connecting by one of the two
SSH transports is the most common way to manage systems. It is useful to understand the difference between the 'ssh'
and 'paramiko' modes.
Paramiko is provided because older Enterprise Linux operating systems do not have an efficient OpenSSH that support
ControlPersist technology, and in those cases, 'paramiko' is faster than 'ssh'. Thus, until EL6 backports a newer
SSH, 'paramiko' is the faster option on that platform.
However, if you have a newer 'ssh' that supports ControlPersist, usage of the 'ssh' transport unlocks additional
configurability, including the option to use Kerberos. For instance, the latest Fedora and Ubuntu releases
all offer a sufficiently new OpenSSH. With ControlPersist available, 'ssh' is usually about as fast as paramiko.
If you'd like even more speed, read about 'fireball' in the Advanced Playbooks section.
Starting with Ansible 1.2.1, the default transport mode for Ansible is 'smart', which means it will detect
if OpenSSH supports ControlPersist, and will select 'ssh' if available, and otherwise pick 'paramiko'.
Previous versions of Ansible defaulted to 'paramiko'.
A note about Host Key Checking
``````````````````````````````
Ansible 1.2.1 and later have host key checking enabled by default.
If a host is reinstalled and has a different key in 'known_hosts', this will result in a error message until
corrected. If a host is not initially in 'known_hosts' this will result in prompting for confirmation of the key,
which results in a interactive experience if using Ansible, from say, cron.
If you wish to disable this behavior and understand the implications, you can do so by editing /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg or ~/.ansible.cfg::
[default]
host_key_checking = False
Usage of host key checking in paramiko mode is reasonably slow, therefore switching to 'ssh' is also recommended when using this
feature.
.. seealso::

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