Questions[ansible-playbook](server)

For various reasons/limitations I cannot make new groups in the inventory file and need to use --limit/-l to specify the hosts.

I was told to do something like:

ansible-playbook -i /path/to/my/inventory/file.ini -l server.1.com server.2.com my-playbook.yml --check --diff

This was throwing an error:

ERROR! the playbook: server.2.com could not be found

From the Ansible Documentation on this subject I found that you could use a separate file to list all the hosts you want to limit. Something like:

ansible-playbook -i /path/to/my/inventory/file.ini -l @list-to-limit.txt my-playbook.yml

However, I need to do it all inline without creating an additional file.

I am getting a count from powershell command and registering it on variable. I have to use that count in when condition. I have changed it to int before using it in when condition too. Still that task ( mail notification) is getting skipped, eventhough the count is 0 here. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong here. Below is the code I am executing

      - name: Get message_count
        shell:  echo "{{ (output.stdout | from_json).MessageCount  }}"
        register: message_count   #message_count is Zero here
        delegate_to: localhost
     
      - set_fact:
          countt: "{{ message_count | int}}"    

#tried converting to integer before passing to condition using set_fact

      - debug: var=countt
      - name: send mail notification
        mail:
           host: abc.zzzz.net
           port: 25
           from: <[email protected]>
           to:
           - [email protected]        

           subject: Test mail sent from core server 
           body: Test mail sent from core server        
        delegate_to: localhost
        when: countt==0

We are starting to look at Ansible to replace an old cfengine2 installation. I have a simple playbook that:

• copies a sudoers file
• copies a templated resolv.conf (fed with group_vars and host_vars data)
• checks a couple of services are running
• checks for presence of a local user

The playbook takes over 4 minutes of wallclock time to run against 97 machines (all connected over fast 1gig or 10gig networking, with sub-1ms LAN latency) and consumes over 50% of CPU on the 2-core 4G memory VM when I'm running it.

It takes about 11 seconds to run against a single machine, with about 4sec of user+sys CPU time consumed, which TBH still seems a bit excessive for the amount of work involved.

The obvious bits:

• I have pipelineing explicitly enabled in a playbook-dir local ansible.cfg
• I have fact caching to jsonfile enabled, same local ansible.cfg
• I have forks set to 50, same (I have tried other values)
• I am sure that Ansible is using SSH not Paramiko and it is using the persistent control socket - I can see the SSH processes being started and persisting during the run.

Is this level of performance normal or is something wrong with my setup? How can I go about determining what, if so?

Edit: As of Aug 2017, we're still seeing this problem. Ansible version is 2.2.1 and the playbook size has grown now. Up-to-date numbers:

• 98 hosts
• ansible -m ping all takes 4.6s real, 3.2s user, 2.5s sys times
• a full playbook run takes 4 minutes, using 100% user and ~35% system CPU while doing it (on a 2-core VM deployment sever, 100% being one full CPU)
• target OS is largely CentOS 7, some CentOS 6
• profiling does not reveal any specifc task hotspots AFAICT

Although the playbook is now much bigger, I still don't think there is anything in there to justify that level of CPU load on the playbook server - wallclock time, perhaps, but the deployment server should be largely idle for most of the run, as far as I can see, it's mostly file copies and some template expansions.

Note we are making quite extensive use of host/groupvars

Several people have asked about profiling, tail of a run with profiling:

Tuesday 01 August 2017  16:02:24 +0100 (0:00:00.539)       0:06:22.991 ******** 
=============================================================================== 
yumrepo : centos repos -------------------------------------------------- 9.77s
sshd : copy CentOS 6 sshd config ---------------------------------------- 7.41s
sshd : copy CentOS 7 sshd config ---------------------------------------- 6.94s
core : ensure core packages are present --------------------------------- 6.28s
core : remove packages on VM guests ------------------------------------- 5.39s
resolv : stop NetworkManager changing resolv.conf ----------------------- 5.25s
yumrepo : epel6 gpg key ------------------------------------------------- 3.94s
yumrepo : epel7 gpg key ------------------------------------------------- 3.71s
yumrepo : nsg gpg key --------------------------------------------------- 3.57s
resolv : build resolv.conf ---------------------------------------------- 3.30s
yumrepo : nsg repo ------------------------------------------------------ 2.66s
resolv : check NetworkManager running ----------------------------------- 2.63s
yumrepo : psp repo ------------------------------------------------------ 2.62s
yumrepo : ucs repo ------------------------------------------------------ 2.44s
yumrepo : epel repo ----------------------------------------------------- 2.27s
resolv : check for nmcli ------------------------------------------------ 2.08s
core : remove various unwanted files ------------------------------------ 1.42s
telegraf : write telegraf.conf file ------------------------------------- 1.13s
core : copy sudoers in place -------------------------------------------- 0.94s
core : ensure sshd is running ------------------------------------------- 0.90s

Running:

- name: get vhosts
  command: rabbitmqctl list_vhosts
  register: vhosts
  changed_when: false

by issuing

sudo ansible-playbook file.yml

results in:

TASK [030.sensu : get vhosts] **************************************************
fatal: [IP]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd": "rabbitmqctl list_vhosts", 
"failed": true, "msg": "[Errno 2] No such file or directory", "rc": 2}

while this error does not occur if ansible is run on the system itself.

Discussion

1. Is the rc command missing?

Issuing rc both locally as remotely results in:

bash: rc: command not found...

If this would be an issue then running the playbook locally would fail as well.

2. Is this a known issue?

Querying "No such file or directory" rc ansible centos on the internet resulted in this Q&A.

According to one of the answers the issue is caused by command. Using shell instead would solve the problem. The solution was tried, but it did not solve the issue.

I wrote a playbook which installs and configures Google Authenticator per user.

I want the last step of the playbook to cat the google_authenticator configuration file.

Using the "debug" module I am able to get the data to be displayed on screen but only as debug message:

TASK: [debug var=details.stdout_lines] ****************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "details.stdout_lines": [
        "ZKMFTE2ADYA2OYCH",
        "\"RATE_LIMIT 3 30",
        "\" DISALLOW_REUSE",
        "\" TOTP_AUTH",
        "12920994",
        "88224784",
        "69464205",
        "38144121",
        "45634120"
    ]
}

I read online that I can do something like that:

  - name: Print to screen google authenticator details
    command: /bin/cat {{ google_authenticator_secret_file_location }}
    register: details
    tags: google_2fa_user

  - debug: msg="{{ details.stdout_lines }}"

But I get an error when I run it:

TASK: [Print to screen google authenticator details] **************************
changed: [localhost]

TASK: [debug msg="{{details.stdout_lines}}"] **********************************
fatal: [localhost] => Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 532, in _executor
    exec_rc = self._executor_internal(host, new_stdin)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 629, in _executor_internal
    return self._executor_internal_inner(host, self.module_name, self.module_args, inject, port, complex_args=complex_args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 815, in _executor_internal_inner
    result = handler.run(conn, tmp, module_name, module_args, inject, complex_args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/runner/action_plugins/debug.py", line 41, in run
    kv = utils.parse_kv(module_args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/utils/__init__.py", line 526, in parse_kv
    vargs = [x.decode('utf-8') for x in shlex.split(args, posix=True)]
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 279, in split
    return list(lex)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 269, in next
    token = self.get_token()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 96, in get_token
    raw = self.read_token()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shlex.py", line 172, in read_token
    raise ValueError, "No closing quotation"
ValueError: No closing quotation


FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************

The error says: "No closing quotation" although it is quoted. Also tried:

 - debug: msg= "{{ details.stdout_lines }}"

Any idea what could be the problem?