Groups in my Ansible inventory does not work as expected - ansible

Question

My yaml inventory (dev environment) is like this:
$> more inventory/dev/hosts.yml
all:
children:
dmz1:
children:
ch:
children:
amq:
hosts:
myamqdev01.company.net: nodeId=1
myamqdev02.company.net: nodeId=2
smx:
hosts:
mysmxdev01.company.net: nodeId=1
mysmxdev02.company.net: nodeId=2
intranet:
children:
ch:
children:
amq:
hosts:
amqintradev01.company.net: nodeId=1
amqintradev02.company.net: nodeId=2
smx:
hosts:
smxintradev01.company.net: nodeId=1
smxintradev02.company.net: nodeId=2
and when I try to ping (with ansible -i inventory/dev -m ping all I got the error:
children: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname children:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
ch: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname ch:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
all: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname all:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
lan: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname lan:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
amq: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname amq:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
hosts: | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: Could not resolve hostname hosts:: Temporary failure in name resolution",
"unreachable": true
}
etc...
For troubleshooting, when I execute ansible -i inventory/dev --list-hosts all I got:
hosts (16):
all:
children:
dmz1:
ch:
amq:
hosts:
myamqdev01.company.net:
myamqdev02.company.net:
smx:
mysmxdev01.company.net:
mysmxdev02.company.net:
intranet:
amqintradev01.company.net:
amqintradev02.company.net:
smxintradev01.company.net:
smxintradev02.company.net:
I think this command should only give the hosts, no?
I am not sure what is the issue but I followed the example from the official doc and I think there's a problem with my hosts.yml file but cannot guess what I am missing.
UPDATE
When I correct the nodeId variables according to the answer, the list all is working fine. However when I try to filter by an intermediate parent this is not working:
ansible -i inventory/dev --list-hosts intranet
does not return the intranet hosts but all.
When I try: ansible -i inventory/dev --list-hosts amq
only amq server are properly returned.

Answer 1

Your inventory file does not respect ansible's format so the yaml inventory plugin fails to parse it. Since it tries plugins in order, for some reason I don't really get it finally succeeds using the ini format and gives one host for each line in your file.
Moreover, you have to understand that a group (e.g. smx) contains all the hosts that have been defined in the inventory, wherever they have been defined (e.g. as a children of intranet or dmz1).
So in your actual inventory structure, dmz1 and intranet both contain as children the groups amq and smx which themselves contain all hosts defined, either in the intranet or dmz1 section. Hence the groups all, dmz1 and intranet are all equivalent here and contain all hosts in the inventory.
Here is an inventory fixing your format problems and with a slightly different structure to address your expectation in terms of group targeting:
---
all:
children:
dmz1:
hosts:
myamqdev01.company.net:
nodeId: 1
myamqdev02.company.net:
nodeId: 2
mysmxdev01.company.net:
nodeId: 1
mysmxdev02.company.net:
nodeId: 2
intranet:
hosts:
amqintradev01.company.net:
nodeId: 1
amqintradev02.company.net:
nodeId: 2
smxintradev01.company.net:
nodeId: 1
smxintradev02.company.net:
nodeId: 2
amq:
hosts:
myamqdev01.company.net:
myamqdev02.company.net:
amqintradev01.company.net:
amqintradev02.company.net:
smx:
hosts:
mysmxdev01.company.net:
mysmxdev02.company.net:
smxintradev01.company.net:
smxintradev02.company.net:
And here are a few example of how to target the desired groups of machines
$ # All machines
$ ansible -i dev/ --list-hosts all
hosts (8):
myamqdev01.company.net
myamqdev02.company.net
mysmxdev01.company.net
mysmxdev02.company.net
amqintradev01.company.net
amqintradev02.company.net
smxintradev01.company.net
smxintradev02.company.net
$ # Intranet
$ ansible -i dev/ --list-hosts intranet
hosts (4):
amqintradev01.company.net
amqintradev02.company.net
smxintradev01.company.net
smxintradev02.company.net
$ # all smx machines
$ ansible -i dev/ --list-hosts smx
hosts (4):
mysmxdev01.company.net
mysmxdev02.company.net
smxintradev01.company.net
smxintradev02.company.net
$ # amq machines only on dmz1
$ # 1. Only whith patterns
$ ansible -i dev/ --list-hosts 'amq:&dmz1'
hosts (2):
myamqdev01.company.net
myamqdev02.company.net
$ # 2. Using limit
$ ansible -i dev/ --list-hosts amq -l dmz1
hosts (2):
myamqdev01.company.net
myamqdev02.company.net