Ansible wait_for_connection until the hosts are ready for ansible? - ansible

I am using ansible to configure some VM's.
Problem I am facing right now is, I can't execute ansible commands right after the VM's are just started, it gives connection time out error. This happens when I execute the ansible right after the VMs are spinned up in GCP.
Commands working fine when I execute ansible playbook after 60 seconds, but I am looking for a way to do this automatically without manually wait 60s and execute, so I can execute right after VM's are spun up and ansible will wait until they are ready. I don't want to add a delay seconds to ansible tasks as well,
I am looking for a dynamic way where ansible tries to execute playbook and when it fails, it won't show any error but wait until the VM's are ready?
I used this, but it still doesn't work (as it fails)
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: Wait for connection
wait_for_connection: # but this will still fails, am I doing this wrong?
- name: Ping all hosts for connectivity check
ping:
Can someone please help me?

I have the same issue on my side.
I've fixed htis with this task wait_for.
The basic way is to waiting ssh connection like this :
- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
wait_for:
port: 22
host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
search_regex: OpenSSH
delay: 10
connection: local
I guess your VM must launch an application/service so you can monitor on the vm in the log file where application is started, like this for example (here for nexus container):
- name: Wait container is start and running
become: yes
become_user: "{{ ansible_nexus_user }}"
wait_for:
path: "{{ ansible_nexus_directory_data }}/log/nexus.log"
search_regex: ".*Started Sonatype Nexus.*"

I believe what you are looking for is to postpone gather_facts until the server is up, as that otherwise will time out as you experienced. Your file could work as follows:
---
- hosts: all
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Wait for connection (600s default)
ansible.builtin.wait_for_connection:
- name: Gather facts manually
ansible.builtin.wait_for_connection
I have these under pre_tasks instead of tasks, but it should probably work if they are first in your file.

Related

Restarting a service after looped commands on multiple servers

I poked around a bit here but didn't see anything that quite matched up to what I am trying to accomplish, so here goes.
So I've put together my first Ansible playbook which opens or closes one or more ports on the firewall of one or more hosts, for one or more specified IP addresses. Works great so far. But what I want to do is restart the firewall service after all the tasks for a given host are complete (with no errors, of course).
NOTE: The hostvars/localhost references just hold vars_prompt input from the user in a task list above this one. I store prompted data in hosts: localhost build a dynamic host list based on what the user entered, and then have a separate task list to actually do the work.
So:
- name: Execute remote firewall-cmd for each host in "dynamically created host group"
hosts: dynamically_created_host_list
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- set_fact:
hostList: "{{hostvars['localhost']['hostList']}}"
- set_fact:
portList: "{{hostvars['localhost']['portList']}}"
- set_fact:
portStateRequested: "{{hostvars['localhost']['portStateRequested']}}"
- set_fact:
portState: "{{hostvars['localhost']['portState']}}"
- set_fact:
remoteIPs: "{{hostvars['localhost']['remoteIPs']}}"
- name: Invoke firewall-cmd remotely
firewalld:
.. module-specific stuff here ...
with_nested:
- "{{ remoteIPs.split(',') }}"
- "{{ portList.split(',') }}"
register: requestStatus
In my original version of the script, which only did 1 port for 1 host for 1 IP, I just did:
- name: Reload firewalld
when: requestStatus.changed
systemd:
name: firewalld
state: reloaded
But I don't think that will work as easily here because of the nesting. For example. Let's say I want to open port 9999 for a remote IP address of 1.1.1.1 on 10 different hosts. And let's say the 5th host has an error for some reason. I may not want to restart the firewall service at that point.
Actually, now that I think about it, I guess that in that scenario, there would be 4 new entries to the firewall config, and 6 that didn't take because of the error. Now I'm wondering if I need to track the successes, and have a rescue block within the Playbook to back those entries that did go through.
Grrr.... any ideas? Sorry, new to Ansible here. Plus, I hate YAML for things like this. :D
Thanks in advance for any guidance.
It looks to me like what you are looking for is what Ansible call handlers.
As we’ve mentioned, modules should be idempotent and can relay when
they have made a change on the remote system. Playbooks recognize this
and have a basic event system that can be used to respond to change.
These ‘notify’ actions are triggered at the end of each block of tasks
in a play, and will only be triggered once even if notified by
multiple different tasks.
For instance, multiple resources may indicate that apache needs to be
restarted because they have changed a config file, but apache will
only be bounced once to avoid unnecessary restarts.
Note that handlers are simply a pair of
A notify attribute on one or multiple tasks
A handler, with a name matching your above mentioned notify attribute
So your playbook should look like
- name: Execute remote firewall-cmd for each host in "dynamically created host group"
hosts: dynamically_created_host_list
gather_facts: no
tasks:
# set_fact removed for concision
- name: Invoke firewall-cmd remotely
firewalld:
# .. module-specific stuff here ...
with_nested:
- "{{ remoteIPs.split(',') }}"
- "{{ portList.split(',') }}"
notify: Reload firewalld
handlers:
- name: Reload firewalld
systemd:
name: firewalld
state: reloaded

How to wait for tomcat server to start up in Ansible playbook

It may be a weird question and I have tried searching but couldn't find what I am looking for.
I have a below playbook which starts tomcat and checks the status. How do i put a condition to wait for it to become online before my playbook finishes. I have looked into wait_for module but not able to put up in the playbook.
---
- name: Starting tomcat service on remote host
shell: "svcadm enable tomcat"
ignore_errors: true
- pause:
seconds: 10
- name: Check the State of tomcat service on the remote host
shell: "svcs tomcat"
register: tomcat_status
- set_fact:
tomcat_state: "{{ tomcat_status.stdout_lines.1.split().0 }}"
The value of tomcat_state should be "online" which tells us that tomcat is up.
Is there anything we can do here OR may be some other way? Appreciate if someone can give some inputs
- name: wait for completion
wait_for:
port: <your_port>
delay: 60
timeout: 500
In this way, this task wait for 60 secs, then check if something is up on the port you specified, and it tries for 500s

How to run plays using Ansible AWX on all hosts in a group using localhost

I'm trying to create a playbook that creates EC2 snapshots of some AWS Windows servers. I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how to get the correct directives in place to make sure things are running as they can. What I need to do is:
run the AWS commands locally, i.e. on the AWX host (as this is preferable to having to configure credentials on every server)
run the commands against each host in the inventory
I've done this in the past with a different group of Linux servers with no issue. But the fact that I'm having these issues makes me think that's not working as I think it is (I'm pretty new to all things Ansible/AWX).
The first step is I need to identify instances that are usually turned off and turn them on, then to take snapshots, then to turn them off again if they are usually turned off. So this is my main.yml:
---
- name: start the instance if the default state is stopped
import_playbook: start-instance.yml
when: default_state is defined and default_state == 'stopped'
- name: run the snapshot script
import_playbook: instance-snapshot.yml
- name: stop the instance if the default state is stopped
import_playbook: stop-instance.yml
when: default_state is defined and default_state == 'stopped'
And this is start-instance.yml
---
- name: make sure instances are running
hosts: all
gather_facts: false
connection: local
tasks:
- name: start the instances
ec2:
instance_id: "{{ instance_id }}"
region: "{{ aws_region }}"
state: running
wait: true
register: ec2
- name: pause for 120 seconds to allow the instance to start
pause: seconds=120
When I run this, I get the following error:
fatal: [myhost,mydomain.com]: UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "ssl: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='myhost,mydomain.com', port=5986): Max retries exceeded with url: /wsman (Caused by ConnectTimeoutError(<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x7f99045e6bd0>, 'Connection to myhost,mydomain.com timed out. (connect timeout=30)'))",
"unreachable": true
I've learnt enough to know that this means it is, indeed, trying to connect to each Windows host which is not what I want. However, I thought having connection: local resolved this as it seemed to with another template I have which uses and identical playbook.
So If I change start-instance.yml to instead say "connection: localhost", then the play runs - but skips the steps because it determines that no hosts meet the condition (i.e. default_state is defined and default_state == 'stopped'). This tells me that the play is running on using localhost to run the play, but is also running it against localhost instead of the list of hosts in the inventory in AWX.
My hosts have variables defined in AWX such as instance ID, region, default state. I know in normal Ansible use we would have the instance IDs in the playbook and that's how Ansible would know which AWS instances to start up, but in this case I need it to get this information from AWX.
Is there any way to do this? So, run the tasks (start the instances, pause for 120 seconds) against all hosts in my AWX inventory, using localhost?
In the end I used delegate_to for this. I changed the code to this:
---
- name: make sure instances are running
hosts: all
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- name: start the instances
delegate_to: localhost
ec2:
instance_id: "{{ instance_id }}"
region: "{{ aws_region }}"
state: running
wait: true
register: ec2
- name: pause for 120 seconds to allow the instance to start
pause: seconds=120
And AWX correctly used localhost to run the tasks I added delegation to.
Worth noting I got stuck for a while before realising my template needed two sets of credentials - one IAM user with correct permissions to run the AWS commands, and one for the machine credentials for the Windows instances.

Make ansible wait for server to start, without logging in

When I provision a new server, there is a lag between the time I create it and it becomes available. So I need to wait until it's ready.
I assumed that was the purpose of the wait_for task:
hosts:
[servers]
42.42.42.42
playbook.yml:
---
- hosts: all
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: wait until server is up
wait_for: port=22
This fails with Permission denied. I assume that's because nothing is setup yet.
I expected it to open an ssh connection and wait for the prompt - just to see if the server is up. But what actually happens is it tries to login.
Is there some other way to perform a wait that doesn't try to login?
as you correctly stated, this task executes on the "to be provisioned" host, so ansible tries to connect to it (via ssh) first, then would try to wait for the port to be up. this would work for other ports/services, but not for 22 on a given host, since 22 is a "prerequisite" for executing any task on that host.
what you could do is try to delegate_to this task to the ansible host (that you run the PB) and add the host parameter in the wait_for task.
Example:
- name: wait until server is up
wait_for:
port: 22
host: <the IP of the host you are trying to provision>
delegate_to: localhost
hope it helps
Q: "Is there some other way to perform a wait that doesn't try to login?"
A: It is possible to wait_for_connection. For example
- hosts: all
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: wait until server is up
wait_for_connection:
delay: 60
timeout: 300

Ansible AWS EC2 Detecting Server is Running Fails

Background:
Just trying to learn how to use Ansible and have been experimenting with the AWS Ec2 module to build and deploy a Ubuntu instance on AWS-EC2. So have built a simple Playbook to create and startup an instance and executed via ansible-playbook -vvvv ic.yml
The playbook is:
---
- name: Create a ubuntu instance on AWS
hosts: localhost
connection: local
gather_facts: False
vars:
# AWS keys for access to the API
ec2_access_key: 'secret-key'
ec2_secret_key: 'secret-key'
region: ap-southeast-2
tasks:
- name: Create a Key-Pair necessary for connection to the remote EC2 host
ec2_key:
name=ic-key region="{{region}}"
register: keypair
- name: Write the Key-Pair to a file for re-use
copy:
dest: files/ic-key.pem
content: "{{ keypair.key.private_key }}"
mode: 0600
when: keypair.changed
- name: start the instance
ec2:
ec2_access_key: "{{ec2_access_key}}"
ec2_secret_key: "{{ec2_secret_key}}"
region: ap-southeast-2
instance_type: t2.micro
image: ami-69631053
key_name: ic-key # key we just created
instance_tags: {Name: icomplain-prod, type: web, env: production} #key-values pairs for naming etc
wait: yes
register: ec2
- name: Wait for instance to start up and be running
wait_for: host = {{item.public_dns_name}} port 22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
with_items: ec2.instances
Problem:
The issue is that when attempting to wait for the instance to fire up, using the wait_for test, as described in Examples for EC-2 module it fails with the following error message:
msg: this module requires key=value arguments (['host', '=', 'ec2-52-64-134-61.ap-southeast-2.compute.amazonaws.com', 'port', '22', 'delay=60', 'timeout=320', 'state=started'])
FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting
Output:
Although the error message appears on the command line when I check in the AWS-Console the Key-Pair and EC2 instance are created and running.
Query:
Wondering
There is some other parameter which I need ?
What is the 'key=value' msg which is the error output being caused by?
Any recommendations on other ways to debug the script to determine the cause of the failure ?
Does it require registration of the host somewhere in the Ansible world ?
Additional NOTES:
Testing the playbook I've observed that the key-pair gets created, the server startup is initiated at AWS as seen from the AWS web console. What appears to be the issue is that the time period of the server to spin up is too long and the script timeouts or fails. Frustratingly, is that the error message is not all that helpful and also wondering if there is any other methods of debugging an ansible script ?
this isn't a problem of "detecting the server is running". As the error message says, it's a problem with syntax.
# bad
wait_for: host = {{item.public_dns_name}} port 22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
# good
wait_for: host={{item.public_dns_name}} port=22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
Additionally, you'll want to run this from the central machine, not the remote (new) server.
local_action: wait_for host={{item.public_dns_name}} port=22 delay=60 timeout=320 state=started
Focusing on the wait_for test as you indicate that the rest is working.
Based on the jobs I have running I would think the issue is with the host name, not with the rest of the code. I use an Ansible server in a protected VPC that has network access to the VPC where the servers start up in, and my wait_for code looks like this (variable name updated to match yours):
- name: wait for instances to listen on port 22
wait_for:
delay: 10
state: started
host: "{{ item.private_ip }}"
port: 22
timeout: 300
with_items: ec2.instances
Trying to use DNS instead of an IP address has always proven to be unreliable for me - if I'm registering DNS as part of a job, it can sometimes take a minute to be resolvable (sometimes instant, sometimes not). Using the IP addresses works every time of course - as long as the networking is set up correctly.
If your Ansible server is in a different region or has to use the external IP to access the new servers, you will of course need to have the relevant security groups and add the new server(s) to those before you can use wait_for.

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