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Asked: 2016-09-02 12:49:30 +0800 CST

Ansible 'ERROR! Missing target hosts'

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I'm trying to get some very basic things working with Ansible 2.1.1.0 on OS X.

My targets are all Ubuntu 16.04, so the very first thing I have to do is get it to install python2.7, as without that even 'ping' won't work.

I have an inventory set up like this in servers:

[dbservers]
192.168.x.x set_hostname=db

[webservers]

[servers:children]
dbservers
webservers

And this is my play in init.yml:

---
- hosts: servers
  gather_facts: False
  become: yes
  tasks:
     - name: apt-get update
       raw: /usr/bin/apt-get update -qq
     - name: Install python 2.7
       raw: test -e /usr/bin/python || /usr/bin/apt-get install -q -y python2.7 python-simplejson

I check that it's selecting the right hosts by specifying the dbservers group, which is a subset of servers (there is only 1 anyway), which looks right to me:

# ansible dbservers -i servers --list-hosts
  hosts (1):
    192.168.x.x

The command I'm running is this:

# ansible dbservers -i servers init.yml

and that's when I get the error ERROR! Missing target hosts. I don't understand how it can have hosts and no hosts at the same time! What am I doing wrong?

ansible

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You are trying to run a playbook with the ansible command. The ansible command is for add-hoc commands.

    Try executing your playbook with ansible-playbook command:

    ansible-playbook -i servers init.yml
    • 5

  2. You have a [servers:children] section, but no [servers] section in your hosts file. So when you set hosts: servers there is no matching group.

    • -1