I have a role which I would like to run multiple times with different vars files, I am currently doing the following:
- hosts: localhost
pre_tasks:
include_vars: "vars/vars1.yml"
roles:
- my_role
- hosts: localhost
pre_tasks:
include_vars: "vars/vars2.yml"
roles:
- my_role
Is there a less boilerplate way to do this? I know it is possible to parameterise roles but I can't find anything in the ansible documentation regarding running a role multiple times and calling a different include_vars each time.
i wanted to do something similar a while back and i ended up having two groups in my inventory
[group1]
localhost1
[group2]
localhost2
and then in group_vars i had different values. In your case that would be
# file: group_vars/group1/main.yml
include_file: vars/vars1.yml
and
# file: group_vars/group2/main.yml
include_file: vars/vars2.yml
Then, you can modify your playbook to something like this
- hosts: all
pre_tasks:
include_vars: "{{ include_file }}"
roles:
- my_role
and finally, execute your playbook for both groups
ansible-playbook pb.yml -l group1,group2
and it should take care of both instalations
Related
The calling playbook has:
- hosts: ssh_servers
tasks:
- import_tasks: create_files.yml
Then, in create_files.yml, I'd like to run some tasks on hosts other than ssh_servers, such as:
- Hosts: other_servers
tasks:
- file:
I get: ERROR! conflicting action statements: hosts, tasks .
Is this because I'm trying to run against hosts that were never included in the calling task ?
Is there a way to accomplish this other than in the calling playbook have:
- hosts:
- ssh_servers
- other_servers
tasks:
- import_tasks: create_files.yml
Thank you.
Is this because I'm trying to run against hosts that were never included in the calling task ? Is there a way to accomplish this other than in the calling playbook
I believe the answer is yes, although it'll be weird and could cause subsequent folks who interact with your playbook some confusion
given a hypothetical create_files.yml of:
- name: create /tmp/hello_world on hosts "not_known_at_launch_time"
file:
path: /tmp/hello_world
state: present
delegate_to: '{{ item }}'
with_items: '{{ groups["not_known_at_launch_time"] }}'
then the glue needed to bridge them together is the dynamic creation of a group and that delegate_to: keyword
- hosts: ssh_hosts
tasks:
- add_host:
groups: not_known_at_launch_time
name: secret-host-0
ansible_host: 192.168.1.1 # or whatever
# ... other hostvars here ...
- include_tasks: create_files.yml
it may be possible to combine those inside create_files.yml, via some shared vars: that say which host-and-ip should be added to the magic group name, which also has the benefit of keeping the magic group name localized to the file that consumes it.
BE AWARE, I did actually test this, but not extensively, so there may be some weird things such as the need to run_once: yes on them to keep the tasks from being run groups.ssh_hosts|length times or similar stuff
As Vladimir correctly pointed out, what you actually want to happen is to make that relationship formal:
- hosts: ssh_hosts
tasks:
... whatever tasks you had before
- add_host: ... as before ...
- hosts: anonymous_group_name_goes_here
tasks:
- include_tasks: create_files.yml
- hosts: ssh_hosts
tasks:
- debug:
msg: and now you are back to the ssh_hosts to pick up what they were supposed to be doing when you stopped to post on SO
How can I declare global variable within Ansible playbook. I have searched in google and found the below solution, but its not working as expected.
- hosts: all
vars:
prod-servers:
- x.x.x.x
- x.x.x.x
- hosts: "{{prod-servers}}"
tasks:
- name: ping
action: ping
When I'm trying the above code, it says variable prod-servers is undefined.
You cannot define a variable accessible on a playbook level (global variable) from within a play.
Variable Scopes
Ansible has 3 main scopes:
Global: this is set by config, environment variables and the command line
Play: each play and contained structures, vars entries (vars; vars_files; vars_prompt), role defaults and vars.
Host: variables directly associated to a host, like inventory, include_vars, facts or registered task outputs
Anything you declare inside a play can thus only be either a play variable, or a (host) fact.
To define a variable, which you can use in the hosts declaration:
run ansible-playbook with --extra-vars option and pass the value in the argument;
or to achieve the same functionality (decide which hosts to run a play on, from within a preceding play):
define an in-memory inventory and run the subsequent play against that inventory.
what you seem to want is an inventory (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/intro_inventory.html), it looks like you have an static list of IP's that may be prod servers (or dev, or whatever), therefore you can create an static inventory.
In your second play you want to use the list of IP's as hosts to run the tasks, that's not what Ansible expects. After the "hosts" keyword in a play declaration, Ansible expects a group name from the inventory.
If, on the opossite, your prod servers change from time to time, you may need to create a dynamic inventory. You can have a look at examples in https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/contrib/inventory (for instance, there are examples of dynamic inventory based on EC2 from Amazon or vsphere)
regards
well, this can be done using
set_fact.
I don't know the best practice for this but this works for me
Here's my playbook example
- hosts: all
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- set_fact: host='hostname'
- hosts: host-name1
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- name: CheckHostName
shell: "{{ host }}"
register: output
- debug: msg="{{ output }}"
- hosts: host-name2
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- name: CheckHostName
shell: "{{ host }}"
register: output
- debug: msg="{{ output }}"
I have the following set up for Ansible, and I would like to parameterize a filter that will loop, and filter out specific hosts.
- name: run on hosts
hosts: "{{ item }}"
roles:
- directory/role-name
with_items:
- us-east-1a
- us-east-1b
- us-east-1c
The result would be that the role called role-name would be first run on us-east-1a hosts, then us-east-1b... etc.
The above simple errors out with
ERROR! 'with_items' is not a valid attribute for a Play
Is there a way to accomplish what I am trying to do, which is chunking my host list into groups, and running the same role against them, one at a time?
The following achieves the result I am looking for, but is clunky, and not dynamic in length.
- name: run on us-east-1a
hosts: "us-east-1a"
roles:
- my-role
- name: run on us-east-1b
hosts: "us-east-1b"
roles:
- my-role
- name: run on us-east-1c
hosts: "us-east-1c"
roles:
- my-role
I think the only way to (1) have a common code and (2) serialise play execution per group of hosts (with targets inside a group running in parallel) would be to split your playbook into two:
playbook-main.yml
---
- import_playbook: playbook-sub.yml
vars:
host_group_to_run: us-east-1a
- import_playbook: playbook-sub.yml
vars:
host_group_to_run: us-east-1b
- import_playbook: playbook-sub.yml
vars:
host_group_to_run: us-east-1c
playbook-sub.yml
- hosts: "{{ host_group_to_run }}"
roles:
- my-role
# other common code
If you wanted to serialise per host, then there is a serial declaration that might be used in conjunction with this suggestion, but despite your comments and edit, it's unclear because once you refer to us-east-1a as a "host" in singular form, other times as a "group of hosts" or an "availability zone".
Will host patterns do the job?:
- name: run on us-east-1a
hosts: us-east-1a,us-east-1b,us-east-1c
roles:
- my-role
Update: #techraf has opened my eyes with his comment – host pattern alone will not do the job.
It will just concatenate all hosts from all groups.
But in a predictable way, which in some cases can be used to iterate hosts in every group separately.
See this answer for details.
I'd like to pass a variable to an included Ansible playbook as follows:
---
- hosts: localhost
connection: local
vars:
my_group: foo
- include: site.yml hosts={{ my_group }}
Then, in site.yml...
---
- hosts: "{{ hosts }}"
...
Unfortunately, I get an error saying that my_group is undefined in site.yml. Ansible docs do say that:
Note that you cannot do variable substitution when including one playbook inside another.
Is this my case? Is there a way around it?
You can use this syntax, but my_group has to be defined at the global level. Now it's local to the first play - it's even clear from the indentation.
You can confirm this by running your playbook with --extra-vars my_group=foo.
But generally what you seem to want to achieve is done using in-memory inventory files and add_host module. Take this as an example:
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: no
vars:
target_host: foo
some_other_variable: bar
tasks:
- add_host:
name: "{{ target_host }}"
groups: dynamically_created_hosts
some_other_variable: "{{ some_other_variable }}"
- include: site.yml
with site.yml:
---
- hosts: dynamically_created_hosts
tasks:
- debug:
var: some_other_variable
I added some_other_variable to answer the question from your comment "how do I make a variable globally available from inside a play". It's not global, but it's passed to another play as a "hostvar".
From what I see (and I can't explain why) in Ansible >=2.1.1.0, there must be an inventory file specified for the dynamic in-memory inventory to work. In older versions it worked with Ansible executed ad hoc, without an inventory file, but now you must run ansible-playbook with -i inventory_file or have an inventory file defined through ansible.cfg.
- name: "API"
hosts: api
vars:
platform: "{{ application.api }}"
vars_files:
- vars/application-vars.yml
tasks:
- include: tasks/application-install.yml
- name: "JOBS"
hosts: jobs
vars:
platform: "{{ application.jobs }}"
vars_files:
- vars/application-vars.yml
tasks:
- include: tasks/application-install.yml
playbook like before described, can I execute this difference tasks on difference hosts in the same time as parallel way?
No sure what do you actually want, but I'd combine it into single play:
- hosts: api:jobs
tasks:
- include: tasks/application-install.yml
And add group vars to inventory:
[api:vars]
platform="{{ application.api }}"
[jobs:vars]
platform="{{ application.jobs }}"
This way you can run your playbook on all hosts at once, and also you can use --limit option to choose api or jobs group only.
you can run more playbooks using "ansible-playbook [OPTIONS] *.yml" command. This will execute all the playbooks NOT IN PARALLEL WAY, but in serial way, so first one playbook and after the execution, another playbook. This command can be helpful if you have many playbooks.
I don't know a way to execute more playbooks in parallel.