Ansible: Ad-Hoc¶

This page will show how to run ad-hoc commands with Ansible.

Informational¶

To ensure connectivity:

ansible all -m ping

Gather Facts:

$ ansible all -m gather_facts

Gather Facts for only one host:

ansible all -m gather_facts --limit 10.0.0.2

List Hosts:

ansible all --list-hosts

To run a sigle command (note that ansible runs them on 5 hosts at a time on default):

ansible all -m command -a hostname

If you want to run commands to more than 5 nodes in parallel, you can use for:

ansible all -m command -a hostname -f 10

When using the shell module when you are using arguments:

ansible all -m shell -a "uptime --help"

Update index repositories with apt and become the root user and prompt for the sudo password:

ansible all -m apt -a update_cache=true --become --ask-become-pass

Install packages with apt:

ansible all -m apt -a name=vim --become --ask-become-pass

Install the latest package with apt:

ansible all -m apt -a "name=vim state=latest" --become --ask-become-pass

Upgrade dist with apt:

ansible all -m apt -a upgrade=dist --become --ask-become-pass

Ensure a service is started with systemd:

ansible nginx -m systemd -a "name=nginx state=started" --become

To list all the modules you can use ansible-doc and to list for ping:

ansible-doc -l | grep -i ping

For usage on it:

ansible-doc ping