I'm trying to create a playbook which basically consists 2 hosts init; (don't ask why)
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: get the hostname of machine and save it as a variable
shell: hostname
register: host_name
when: ansible_host == "x.x.x.x" *(will be filled by my application)*
- hosts: "{{ host_name.stdout }}"
tasks:
- name: use the variable as hostname
shell: whoami
I don't have any hostname information in my application so I need to trigger my playbook with an IP address, then i should get the hostname of that machine and save it to a variable to use in my other tasks to avoid "when" command for each task.
The problem is that I'm able to use "host_name" variable in all other fields except "hosts", it gives me an Error like this when i try to run;
ERROR! The field 'hosts' has an invalid value, which includes an undefined variable. The error was: 'host_name' is undefined
Screenshot of the error
By default, Ansible itself gathers some information about a host. This happens at the beginning of a playbook's execution right after PLAY in TASK [Gathering Facts].
This automatic gathering of information about a system can be turned off via gather_facts: no, by default this is active.
This collected information is called Ansible Facts. An example of the collected facts is shown in the Ansible Docs, for your host you can print out all Ansible Facts:
either in the playbook as a task:
- name: Print all available facts
debug:
var: ansible_facts
or via CLI as an adhoc command:
ansible <hostname> -m setup
The Ansible Facts contain values like: ansible_hostname, ansible_fqdn, ansible_domain or even ansible_all_ipv4_addresses. This is the simplest way to act with the hostname of the client.
If you want to output the hostname and IP addresses that Ansible has collected, you can do it with the following tasks for example:
- name: Print hostname
debug:
var: ansible_hostname
- name: Print IP addresses
debug:
var: ansible_all_ipv4_addresses
If you start your playbook for all hosts, you can check the IP address and also stop it directly for the "wrong" clients.
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: terminate execution for wrong hosts
assert:
that: '"x.x.x.x" is in ansible_all_ipv4_addresses'
fail_msg: Terminating because IP did not match
success_msg: "Host matched. Hostname: {{ ansible_hostname }}"
# your task for desired host
I want to parameterize (use a variable) for remote_user in ansible.
This is the first part from the playbook:
- hosts: xxx
remote_user: "centos"
become: true
I will replace it with
- hosts: wazuh
remote_user: "{{ new_user }}"
become: true
But what is a good place to store the value of this variable? It seems group_vars/all mostly contain variables which are more app/env specific than ansible specific. Or should I put it in inventories/hosts as a var? What is the recommended location to store it?
You should actually store it in your inventory as ansible_user either for the all group (for all host), a specific group or a specific host. You can keep a remote_user in your play which will be used in case the ansible_user is not defined for some hosts in your inventory. If you remove it, you local user on the controller will be the default, unless you use the -u flag on the command line.
You can find a good explanation of the difference between ansible_user and remote_user and how the overide works in the documentation on variable precedence
Using a var as you wrote it in your above example can actually work. But since it must be expanded before the play actually starts and any action is taken on any host, the only place you can "store" it is in an extra_var on the command line.
To be a little more practical, here is what I suggest from your above example:
inventories/dev/hosts.yml
---
wazuh:
hosts:
host_a.wazuh.tld:
host.b.wazuh.tld:
inventories/dev/group_vars/wazuh.yml
---
# Vars for the wazuh group
ansible_user: centos
plabook.yml
---
- hosts: wazuh
tasks:
- name: Proove we connected with the given user
cmd: whoami
register: whoami_result
- name: Show actual result
debug:
var: whoami_result.stdout
Launching the playbook:
ansible-playbook -i inventories/dev playbook.yml
I am trying to use ansible to modify the hostnames of a dozen newly created Virtual Machines, and I am failing to understand how to loop correctly.
Here is the playbook I've written:
---
- hosts: k8s_kvm_vms
tasks:
- name: "update hostnames"
hostname:
name: "{{ item }}"
with_items:
- centos01
- centos02
...
The result is that it updates each host with each hostname. So if I have 12 machines, each hostname would be "centos12" at the end of the playbook.
I expect this behavior to essentially produce the same result as:
num=0
for ip in ${list_of_ips[*]}; do
ssh $ip hostnamectl set-hostname centos${num}
num=$((num+1))
done
If I were to write it myself in bash
The answer on this page leads me to believe I would have to include all of the IP addresses in my playbook. In my opinion, the advantage of scripting would be that I could have the same hostnames even if their IP changes (I just have to copy the ip addresses into /etc/ansible/hosts) which I could reuse with other playbooks. I have read the ansible page on the hostname module, but their example leads me to believe I would, instead of using a loop, have to define a task for each individual IP address. If this is the case, why use ansible over a bash script?
ansible hostname module
You can create a new variable for each of the servers in the inventory like
[k8s_kvm_vms]
server1 new_hostname=centos1
server2 new_hostname=centos2
Playbook:
---
- hosts: k8s_kvm_vms
tasks:
- name: "update hostnames"
hostname:
name: "{{ new_hostname }}"
I think you need to sudo to change the hostname thus you should add "become: yes"
---
- hosts: k8s_kvm_vms
become: yes
tasks:
- name: "update hostnames"
hostname:
name: "{{ new_hostname }}"
how can I edit a remote cfg file or in my case
I must modify the "hostname" by the name of the remote machine,
knowing that it is for automated because aprre I will deploy it on +300 server
I must be able to get the remote hostname and put it in the cfg file with ansible
thanks
############# file for config host ############
---
- hosts: computer_user
remote_user: toto
tasks:
- name: "config zabbix agent"
lineinfile:
path: /etc/zabbix.cfg
regexp: '(.*)hostname_local(.*)'
line: '%hostname%'
########### file_cfg_on_computer_user #########
hostname_local: here_i_want_put_the_hostname_of_my_computer_user_with_a_like_%hostname%
I'm not really sure about what you really want, but if you want to get the hostname of the system where your playbook is running, then you have two possibility :
You can get the value of inventory_hostname : It is the name of the hostname as configured in Ansible’s inventory host file
Or you can get the value of the ansible fact ansible_hostname : this one is discovered during the gathering fact phase
You can find more info about hosts variables and facts here
Ansible defines many special variables at runtime.
You can use {{ inventory_hostname }} to returns the inventory name for the ‘current’ host being iterated over in the play.
Or you can execute a remote command and use result in next task :
---
- hosts: computer_user
remote_user: toto
tasks:
- name: "get hostname from remote host"
shell: hostname
register: result_hostname
- name: "config zabbix agent"
lineinfile:
path: /etc/zabbix.cfg
regexp: '(.*)hostname_local(.*)'
line: '{{ result_hostname.stdout }}'
This is a fragment of a playbook that I'm using (server.yml):
- name: Determine Remote User
hosts: web
gather_facts: false
roles:
- { role: remote-user, tags: [remote-user, always] }
My hosts file has different groups of servers, e.g.
[web]
x.x.x.x
[droplets]
x.x.x.x
Now I want to execute ansible-playbook -i hosts/<env> server.yml and override hosts: web from server.yml to run this playbook for [droplets].
Can I just override as a one time off thing, without editing server.yml directly?
Thanks.
I don't think Ansible provides this feature, which it should. Here's something that you can do:
hosts: "{{ variable_host | default('web') }}"
and you can pass variable_host from either command-line or from a vars file, e.g.:
ansible-playbook server.yml --extra-vars "variable_host=newtarget(s)"
For anyone who might come looking for the solution.
Play Book
- hosts: '{{ host }}'
tasks:
- debug: msg="Host is {{ ansible_fqdn }}"
Inventory
[web]
x.x.x.x
[droplets]
x.x.x.x
Command: ansible-playbook deplyment.yml -i hosts --extra-vars "host=droplets"
So you can specify the group name in the extra-vars
We use a simple fail task to force the user to specify the Ansible limit option, so that we don't execute on all hosts by default/accident.
The easiest way I found is this:
---
- name: Force limit
# 'all' is okay here, because the fail task will force the user to specify a limit on the command line, using -l or --limit
hosts: 'all'
tasks:
- name: checking limit arg
fail:
msg: "you must use -l or --limit - when you really want to use all hosts, use -l 'all'"
when: ansible_limit is not defined
run_once: true
Now we must use the -l (= --limit option) when we run the playbook, e.g.
ansible-playbook playbook.yml -l www.example.com
Limit option docs:
Limit to one or more hosts This is required when one wants to run a
playbook against a host group, but only against one or more members of
that group.
Limit to one host
ansible-playbook playbooks/PLAYBOOK_NAME.yml --limit "host1"
Limit to multiple hosts
ansible-playbook playbooks/PLAYBOOK_NAME.yml --limit "host1,host2"
Negated limit.
NOTE: Single quotes MUST be used to prevent bash
interpolation.
ansible-playbook playbooks/PLAYBOOK_NAME.yml --limit 'all:!host1'
Limit to host group
ansible-playbook playbooks/PLAYBOOK_NAME.yml --limit 'group1'
This is a bit late, but I think you could use the --limit or -l command to limit the pattern to more specific hosts. (version 2.3.2.0)
You could have
- hosts: all (or group)
tasks:
- some_task
and then ansible-playbook playbook.yml -l some_more_strict_host_or_pattern
and use the --list-hosts flag to see on which hosts this configuration would be applied.
An other solution is to use the special variable ansible_limit which is the contents of the --limit CLI option for the current execution of Ansible.
- hosts: "{{ ansible_limit | default(omit) }}"
If the --limit option is omitted, then Ansible issues a warning, but does nothing since no host matched.
[WARNING]: Could not match supplied host pattern, ignoring: None
PLAY ****************************************************************
skipping: no hosts matched
I'm using another approach that doesn't need any inventory and works with this simple command:
ansible-playbook site.yml -e working_host=myhost
To perform that, you need a playbook with two plays:
first play runs on localhost and add a host (from given variable) in a known group in inmemory inventory
second play runs on this known group
A working example (copy it and runs it with previous command):
- hosts: localhost
connection: local
tasks:
- add_host:
name: "{{ working_host }}"
groups: working_group
changed_when: false
- hosts: working_group
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- debug:
msg: "I'm on {{ ansible_host }}"
I'm using ansible 2.4.3 and 2.3.3
I changed mine to default to no host and have a check to catch it. That way the user or cron is forced to provide a single host or group etc. I like the logic from the comment from #wallydrag. The empty_group contains no hosts in the inventory.
- hosts: "{{ variable_host | default('empty_group') }}"
Then add the check in tasks:
tasks:
- name: Fail script if required variable_host parameter is missing
fail:
msg: "You have to add the --extra-vars='variable_host='"
when: (variable_host is not defined) or (variable_host == "")
Just came across this googling for a solution. Actually, there is one in Ansible 2.5. You can specify your inventory file with --inventory, like this: ansible --inventory configs/hosts --list-hosts all
If you want to run a task that's associated with a host, but on different host, you should try delegate_to.
In your case, you should delegate to your localhost (ansible master) and calling ansible-playbook command
I am using ansible 2.5 (2.5.3 exactly), and it seems that the vars file is loaded before the hosts param is executed. So you can set the host in a vars.yml file and just write hosts: {{ host_var }} in your playbook
For example, in my playbook.yml:
---
- hosts: "{{ host_name }}"
become: yes
vars_files:
- vars/project.yml
tasks:
...
And inside vars/project.yml:
---
# general
host_name: your-fancy-host-name
Here's a cool solution I came up to safely specify hosts via the --limit option. In this example, the play will end if the playbook was executed without any hosts specified via the --limit option.
This was tested on Ansible version 2.7.10
---
- name: Playbook will fail if hosts not specified via --limit option.
# Hosts must be set via limit.
hosts: "{{ play_hosts }}"
connection: local
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- set_fact:
inventory_hosts: []
- set_fact:
inventory_hosts: "{{inventory_hosts + [item]}}"
with_items: "{{hostvars.keys()|list}}"
- meta: end_play
when: "(play_hosts|length) == (inventory_hosts|length)"
- debug:
msg: "About to execute tasks/roles for {{inventory_hostname}}"
This worked for me as I am using Azure devops to deploy an application using CICD pipelines. I had to make this hosts (in yml file) more dynamic so in release pipeline I can add it's value, for example:
--extra-vars "host=$(target_host)"
pipeline_variable
My ansible playbook looks like this
- name: Apply configuration to test nodes
hosts: '{{ host }}'