Run command on the Ansible host

Question

Is it possible to run commands on the Ansible host   My scenario is that I want to take a checkout from a git server that is hosted internally  and isn t accessible outside the company firewall   Then I want to upload the checkout  tarballed  to the production server  hosted externally    At the moment  I m looking at running a script that does the checkout  tarballs it  and then runs the deployment script - but if I could integrate this into Ansible that would be preferable

User · Accepted Answer

Yes  you can run commands on the Ansible host  You can specify that all tasks in a play run on the Ansible host  or you can mark individual tasks to run on the Ansible host   If you want to run an entire play on the Ansible host  then specify hosts  127 0 0 1 and connection local in the play  for example   - name  a play that runs entirely on the ansible host   hosts  127 0 0 1   connection  local   tasks    - name  check out a git repository     git  repo git   foosball example org path to repo git dest  local path   See Local Playbooks in the Ansible documentation for more details   If you just want to run a single task on your Ansible host  you can use local action to specify that a task should be run locally  For example   - name  an example playbook   hosts  webservers   tasks    -        - name  check out a git repository     local action  git repo git   foosball example org path to repo git dest  local path   See Delegation in the Ansible documentation for more details   Edit  You can avoid having to type connection  local in your play by adding this to your inventory   localhost ansible connection local    Here you d use  localhost  instead of  127 0 0 1  to refer to the play    Edit  In newer versions of ansible  you no longer need to add the above line to your inventory  ansible assumes it s already there

User · Answer

I d like to share that Ansible can be run on localhost via shell   ansible all -i  localhost   -c local -m shell -a  echo hello world   This could be helpful for simple tasks or for some hands-on learning of Ansible   The example of code is taken from this good article    Running ansible playbook in localhost

User · Answer

I ve found a couple other ways you can write these which are a bit more readable IMHO   - name  check out a git repository   local action       module  git     repo  git   foosball example org path to repo git     dest   local path   OR  - name  check out a git repository   local action  git   args      repo  git   foosball example org path to repo git     dest   local path

User · Answer

From the Ansible documentation   Delegation This isn   t actually rolling update specific but comes up frequently in those cases   If you want to perform a task on one host with reference to other hosts  use the    delegate to    keyword on a task  This is ideal for placing nodes in a load balanced pool  or removing them  It is also very useful for controlling outage windows  Be aware that it does not make sense to delegate all tasks  debug  add host  include  etc always get executed on the controller  Using this with the    serial    keyword to control the number of hosts executing at one time is also a good idea   ---  - hosts  webservers   serial  5    tasks     - name  take out of load balancer pool     command   usr bin take out of pool    inventory hostname        delegate to  127 0 0 1    - name  actual steps would go here     yum        name  acme-web-stack       state  latest    - name  add back to load balancer pool     command   usr bin add back to pool    inventory hostname        delegate to  127 0 0 1   These commands will run on 127 0 0 1  which is the machine running Ansible  There is also a shorthand syntax that you can use on a per-task basis     local action     Here is the same playbook as above  but using the shorthand syntax for delegating to 127 0 0 1   ---           tasks     - name  take out of load balancer pool     local action  command  usr bin take out of pool    inventory hostname              - name  add back to load balancer pool     local action  command  usr bin add back to pool    inventory hostname      A common pattern is to use a local action to call    rsync    to recursively copy files to the managed servers  Here is an example   ---         tasks     - name  recursively copy files from management server to target     local action  command rsync -a  path to files    inventory hostname     path to target    Note that you must have passphrase-less SSH keys or an ssh-agent configured for this to work  otherwise rsync will need to ask for a passphrase

User · Answer

ansible your server name -i custom inventory file name -m -a  uptime    The default module is command module  hence command keyword is not required   If you need to issue any command with elevated privileges use -b at the end of the same command   ansible your server name -i custom inventory file name -m -a  uptime  -b

User · Answer

You can use delegate to to run commands on your Ansible host  admin host   from where you are running your Ansible play  For example   Delete a file if it already exists on Ansible host    - name  Remove file if already exists    file      path   tmp logfile log     state  absent     mode   u rw g-wx o-rwx     delegate to  127 0 0 1   Create a new file on Ansible host     - name  Create log file    file      path   tmp logfile log     state  touch     mode   u rw g-wx o-rwx     delegate to  127 0 0 1

User · Answer

you can try this way   git  repo   https   foosball example org path to repo git  dest   srv checkout version  release-0 2 delegate to  localhost name  perform some command next yum  name ntp state latest

User · Answer

Expanding on the answer by  gordon  here s an example of readable syntax and argument passing with shell command module  these differ from the git module in that there are required but free-form arguments  as noted by  ander    - name   release tarball is generated    local action      module  shell      raw params  git archive --format zip --output release zip HEAD     chdir   files clones webhooks

[deployment] Run command on the Ansible host

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