I know I can use the command below to save all ansible facts to a file:
ansible all -m setup --tree facts.d/
But I want to do this within a playbook. Currently I have:
- name: Collect facts
setup:
fact_path: facts.d
But nothing is collected when I run the task. Am I missing something?
- name: save all facts to host specific file
copy:
content: "{{ ansible_delegated_vars[inventory_hostname].vars | to_nice_json }}"
dest: "{{ playbook_dir }}/{{ ansible_fqdn }}"
delegate_to: localhost
This will create a file per host at playbook dir.
Reference : https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-project/c/HI65wOUIrx4?pli=1
If you just want to write a variable into a file you could use something like
- name: Copy Ansible facts to a file
copy:
content: "{{ ansible_facts }}"
dest: /tmp/ansible_facts_details.json
Thanks to
Cache Plugins, since that can be depending on the requirements already be a solution
Ansible: Facts in a single file
Ansible: Write whole facts to file
Related
I had our security group ask for all the information we gather from the hosts we manage with Ansible Tower. I want to run the setup command and put it into a file in a folder I can run ansible-cmdb against. I need to do this in a playbook because we have disabled root login on the hosts and only allow public / private key authentication of the Tower user. The private key is stored in the database so I cannot run the setup command from the cli and impersonate the Tower user.
EDIT I am adding my code so it can be tested elsewhere.
gather_facts.yml
---
- hosts: all
gather_facts: true
become: true
tasks:
- name: Check for temporary dir make it if it does not exist
file:
path: /tmp/ansible
state: directory
mode: 0755
- name: Gather Facts into a file
copy:
content: '{"ansible_facts": {{ ansible_facts | to_json }}}'
dest: /tmp/ansible/{{ inventory_hostname }}
cmdb_gather.yml
---
- hosts: all
gather_facts: no
become: true
tasks:
- name: Fetch fact gather files
fetch:
src: /tmp/ansible/{{ inventory_hostname }}
dest: /depot/out/
flat: yes
CLI:
ansible -i devinventory -m setup --tree out/ all
This would basically look like (wrote on spot not tested):
- name: make the equivalent of "ansible somehosts -m setup --tree /some/dir"
hosts: my_hosts
vars:
treebase: /path/to/tree/base
tasks:
- name: Make sure we have a folder for tree base
file:
path: "{{ treebase }}"
state: directory
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true
- name: Dump facts host by host in our treebase
copy:
dest: "{{ treebase }}/{{ inventory_hostname }}"
content: '{"ansible_facts": {{ ansible_facts | to_json }}}'
delegate_to: localhost
Ok I figured it out. While #Zeitounator had a correct answer I had the wrong idea. In checking the documentation for ansible-cmdb I caught that the application can use the fact cache. When I included a custom ansible.cfg in the project folder and added:
[defaults]
fact_caching=jsonfile
fact_caching_connection = /depot/out
ansible-cmdb was able to parse the output correctly using:
ansible-cmdb -f /depot/out > ansible_hosts.html
This question already has answers here:
Where can I get a list of Ansible pre-defined variables?
(10 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
Is there exists some way to print on console gathered facts ?
I mean gatering facts using setup module. I would like to print gathered facts. Is it possible ? If it is possible can someone show example?
Use setup module as ad-hoc command:
ansible myhost -m setup
You can simply dump the hostvars:
dump.yml
---
- name: Dump
hosts: "{{ target|default('localhost') }}"
tasks:
- name: Facts
setup:
- name: Dump
delegate_to: localhost
run_once: true
copy:
content: "{{ hostvars[inventory_hostname] | to_nice_json }}"
dest: /tmp/setup-dump.json
Call this playbook with ansible-playbook dump.yml -e target=hostname or simply without hostname.
With mode=pull, I want to fetch and save remote files to the "dest" directory per hostname under the same top-level directory tree.
This is what I want:
src=/proc/cpuinfo (of every Ansible inventory host)
dest=/tmp/host1/cpuinfo, /tmp/host2/cpuinfo, /tmp/host3/cpuinfo, etc. (of the Ansible master)
If I do,
ansible all -m synchronize 'src=/proc/cpuinfo dest=/tmp/cpuinfo mode=pull'
/tmp/cpuinfo file on the Ansible master (= dest) gets overwritten by every remote host's cpuinfo file and I get to see only the very last one.
That is, I want a similar behavior as if I run
ansible all -m fetch -a 'src=/proc/cpuinfo dest=/tmp/cpuinfo'
Thank you in advance!
Steve
I doubt you can do this with single ad-hoc command.
ansible all -m synchronize -a 'src=/proc/cpuinfo dest=/tmp/{{inventory_hostname}}/cpuinfo mode=pull'
could do the thing, but you must create /tmp/<hostname> directories in advance, because rsync doesn't create non-existent directories for you. And you can't use ansible facts (like ansible_hostname and ansible_fqdn) as parameters for ad-hoc module execution - only "predefined" variables (like inventory_hostname).
Update: playbook code
- file:
path: "/tmp/{{ inventory_hostname }}"
state: directory
delegate_to: localhost
- synchronize:
src: /proc/cpuinfo
dest: "/tmp/{{ inventory_hostname }}/cpuinfo"
mode: pull
(Original poster)
Another way to do it using the synchronize module only:
- synchronize:
src: "{{ item.src }}"
dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
mode: pull
with_items:
- { src: '/proc/cpuinfo', dest: '/tmp/testing/{{ inventory_hostname }}/proc' }
- { src: '/proc/meminfo', dest: '/tmp/testing/{{ inventory_hostname }}/proc' }
- { src: '/etc/services', dest: '/tmp/testing/{{ inventory_hostname }}/etc' }
Below is a part of a playbook in Ansible 2.1:
- hosts: localhost
any_errors_fatal: true
tasks:
- name: Bla Bla
file: path=/var/tmp/somedir state=directory
#ignore_errors: no
- name: Create directory for every host
file: path=/var/tmp/somedir/{{ item }} state=directory
with_items: "{{ groups['XYZ'] }}"
- name: Get File contents of NewFile
shell: cat NewFile.txt executable=/bin/bash
register: file_contents
- hosts: XYZ
#any_errors_fatal: true
vars:
num_hosts: "{{ groups['XYZ'] | length }}"
serial: num_hosts
tasks:
- name: Copy files to corresponding directories
vars:
path: /var/tmp/somedir/{{ item[0] }}
synchronize: mode=pull src={{ item[1] }} dest={{ path }}
with_nested:
- "{{ groups['XYZ'] }}"
- with_lines: cat NewFile.txt
This does not work.
Now the problem is i am not able to reference file_contents which has been registered under localhost and Ansible is not supporting to cat the NewFile from the hosts: XYZ
Is there any way to do this in some simple manner? I need to check contents of the NewFile in this playbook only and then use the same to copy files from remote to local.
As mentioned in the comments, facts (or all variables) are stored on a host basis. If you have registered a values from a task running on localhost, you can access it from any task running in context of other hosts through the global hostvars dict. All hosts and their facts are stored in there:
hostvars['localhost']['file_contents']
I am not entirely sure simply registered variables are available in the hostvars dict. If not, you have to use set_fact in the first play to store it as a fact.
I'm using the ec2 module with ansible-playbook I want to set a variable to the contents of a file. Here's how I'm currently doing it.
Var with the filename
shell task to cat the file
use the result of the cat to pass to the ec2 module.
Example contents of my playbook.
vars:
amazon_linux_ami: "ami-fb8e9292"
user_data_file: "base-ami-userdata.sh"
tasks:
- name: user_data_contents
shell: cat {{ user_data_file }}
register: user_data_action
- name: launch ec2-instance
local_action:
...
user_data: "{{ user_data_action.stdout }}"
I assume there's a much easier way to do this, but I couldn't find it while searching Ansible docs.
You can use lookups in Ansible in order to get the contents of a file, e.g.
user_data: "{{ lookup('file', user_data_file) }}"
Caveat: This lookup will work with local files, not remote files.
Here's a complete example from the docs:
- hosts: all
vars:
contents: "{{ lookup('file', '/etc/foo.txt') }}"
tasks:
- debug: msg="the value of foo.txt is {{ contents }}"
You can use the slurp module to fetch a file from the remote host: (Thanks to #mlissner for suggesting it)
vars:
amazon_linux_ami: "ami-fb8e9292"
user_data_file: "base-ami-userdata.sh"
tasks:
- name: Load data
slurp:
src: "{{ user_data_file }}"
register: slurped_user_data
- name: Decode data and store as fact # You can skip this if you want to use the right hand side directly...
set_fact:
user_data: "{{ slurped_user_data.content | b64decode }}"
You can use fetch module to copy files from remote hosts to local, and lookup module to read the content of fetched files.
lookup only works on localhost. If you want to retrieve variables from a variables file you made remotely use include_vars: {{ varfile }} . Contents of {{ varfile }} should be a dictionary of the form {"key":"value"}, you will find ansible gives you trouble if you include a space after the colon.