Ansible

Ad-hoc commands, running playbooks safely, inventory, vault and debugging.

Ad-hoc commands

Check connectivity to all hosts

ansible all -i <inventory> -m ping

Run a shell command on a group

ansible <group> -i <inventory> -m shell -a 'uptime'

Restart a service with sudo

ansible <group> -i <inventory> -b -m service -a 'name=nginx state=restarted'

Gather facts about a host

ansible <host> -i <inventory> -m setup

Run a playbook

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml

Dry run showing diffs

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --check --diff

Limit to specific hosts

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --limit <host>

Run only tasks with a tag

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --tags <tag>

Pass extra variables

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml -e 'version=1.2.3'

List tasks without runningadvanced

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --list-tasks

Start from a specific taskadvanced

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --start-at-task '<task>'

Inventory as a tree

ansible-inventory -i <inventory> --graph

All variables of a hostadvanced

ansible-inventory -i <inventory> --host <host>

Encrypt a file

ansible-vault encrypt <file>

Edit an encrypted file

ansible-vault edit <file>

Encrypt a single value for a vars fileadvanced

ansible-vault encrypt_string '<secret_value>' --name 'db_password'

Run a playbook with a vault password prompt

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml --ask-vault-pass

Verbose output

ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook>.yml -vvv

Syntax check

ansible-playbook <playbook>.yml --syntax-check

Module documentation

ansible-doc <module>