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Ansible - Getting Started with Magic Variables

by Jeremy Canfield | Updated: January 31 2022 | Ansible articles

In Ansible, there are three types of Special Variables.

Connection Variables
Magic Variables (this article)
Facts

A magic variable are variables that are built into Ansible. Following are the magic variables.

ansible_check_mode
ansible_config_file
ansible_dependent_role_names
ansible_diff_mode
ansible_forks
ansible_inventory_sources
ansible_limit
ansible_loop
ansible_loop_var
ansible_index_var
ansible_parent_role_names
ansible_parent_role_paths
ansible_play_batch
ansible_play_hosts
ansible_play_hosts_all
ansible_play_name
ansible_play_role_names
ansible_playbook_python
ansible_role_names
ansible_collection_name
ansible_run_tags
ansible_search_path
ansible_skip_tags
ansible_verbosity
ansible_version
group_names
groups
hostvars
inventory_hostname
inventory_hostname_short
inventory_dir
inventory_file
omit
play_hosts
playbook_dir
role_name
role_names
role_path

For example, let's say you have a playbook named version.yml and version.yml contains the following.

---
- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
  - debug:
      var: ansible_version
...

You can run the version.yml playbook using the ansible-playbook command.

ansible-playbook version.yml

Which should return something like this.

TASK [debug]
ok: [localhost] => {
    "ansible_version": {
        "full": "2.9.27", 
        "major": 2, 
        "minor": 9, 
        "revision": 27, 
        "string": "2.9.27"
    }
}

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Comments

January 31 2022 by vergissmiNET

Sorry but this article is a complete mess. You start talking about magic variables and give a (completely different) fact as an example. And what has 'gather_facts' to do with magic vars? [ansible@ansible-control http]$ cat magiclocal.yml --- - name: test hosts: localhost gather_facts: False tasks: - debug: var: ansible_version [ansible@ansible-control http]$ ap magiclocal.yml PLAY [test] ********************************************************************************************* TASK [debug] ******************************************************************************************** ok: [localhost] => { "ansible_version": { "full": "2.9.27", "major": 2, "minor": 9, "revision": 27, "string": "2.9.27" } } PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************************************** localhost : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

January 31 2022 by Jeremy (moderator)

Yeah, this article was confusing. I was way overdue to clean up this article. I got this article cleaned up so that it makes sense now.

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