In a previous post about my Ansible role for creating/removing a Scenario 2 VPC in AWS, I noted that I had been unable to get the ec2_vpc_route_table module to successfully delete route tables. Instead, I fell back to using the awscli to handle the deletion. This kludgy workaround didn’t sit right with me, so I finally dedicated some time this morning to troubleshooting it.

As it turns out, there is a parameter that must be specified when that module is invoked to delete route tables, and the documentation does not call out the necessity of that parameter when deleting route tables and using the route_table_id parameter.

So, this doesn’t work:

- name: Delete AZ1 private route table
  ec2_vpc_route_table:
    state: absent
    vpc_id: "{{ vpc_id }}"
    route_table_id: "{{ private_rt_az1_id }}"

Instead, you have to add the “lookup” parameter and specify “id” as the lookup type since we are using the rt_id:

- name: Delete AZ1 private route table
  ec2_vpc_route_table:
    state: absent
    vpc_id: "{{ vpc_id }}"
    route_table_id: "{{ private_rt_az1_id }}"
    lookup: "id"

I have submitted a Github issue requesting clarification of the generated documentation for the module to specify this requirement.

In the meantime, I’ve incorporated this change in the role and updated my repo for the role. Cheers!