Ansible change ssh port in playbook

Question

Here is the inventory file

---
[de-servers]
192.26.32.32

[uk-servers]
172.21.1.23
172.32.2.11

and my playbook is look like this:

Answer 1

My full solution to this was to create a common playbook imported at the top of all other playbooks that checks the status of the non-standard ansible_port defined in the inventory. If the port is open then continue as normal. If it's not open check port 22 and set the ansible_port fact to that if so.

Later, when the SSH server is configured for the first time and the default port is changed to my non-standard port, I then update the ansible_port fact manually in my playbook so that any further Ansible connections in the current run will work as expected.

My inventory looks like this:

[webservers]
web01.somedomain.com ansible_port=1234

My playbook looks like this:

- name: Determine SSH port
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  remote_user: root
  tasks:
    - name: "Check port {{ ansible_port }}"
      wait_for:
        port: "{{ ansible_port }}"
        state: "started"
        host: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"
        connect_timeout: "5"
        timeout: "5"
      delegate_to: "localhost"
      ignore_errors: "yes"
      register: ssh_port

    - name: "Check port 22"
      wait_for:
        port: "22"
        state: "started"
        host: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"
        connect_timeout: "5"
        timeout: "5"
      delegate_to: "localhost"
      ignore_errors: "yes"
      register: ssh_port_default
      when: 
        - ssh_port is defined 
        - ssh_port.state is undefined

    - name: Set SSH port to 22
      set_fact:
        ansible_port: "22"
      when: ssh_port_default.state is defined

Finally, right after the SSH server is configured and the port has been changed I have this:

- name: Set SSH port to 1234
  set_fact:
    ansible_port: "1234"

Answer 2

In the role de-server-setup add a task to change the ansible_port host variable.

- name: Change ssh port to 8888
  set_fact:
    ansible_port: 8888