Bootstrap FreeKB - Ansible - Getting Started with Roles
Ansible - Getting Started with Roles

Updated:   |  Ansible articles

There are a few different ways to invoke one or more roles in a playbook.

With roles, you will need to create the roles directories, subdirectories, and files. You can:

Here is an example of the directory structure used with roles.

├── /usr/local
│   ├── main.yml
│   ├── roles
│   │   ├── foo
│   │   ├── ├── defaults
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── files
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── handlers
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── meta
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── tasks
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── templates
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── ├── vars
│   │   ├── ├── ├── main.yml

 


Where should the "roles" files and directories reside?

Let's say your playbook wants to use the "foo" role.

---
- hosts: all
  roles:
    - foo
...

 

Or like this.

---
- hosts: all
  roles:
    - role: foo
...

 

Ansible will search the following directories for the "foo" role:

  • The directory that contains your playbook (e.g. /home/john.doe/)
  • /etc/ansible/roles/

Let's say you define some other roles_path in ansible.cfg.

roles_path = /usr/local/ansible/roles

 

Or using the ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH variable.

export ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH=/usr/local/ansible/roles

 

Now Ansible will search the following directories for the "foo" role:

  • The directory that contains your playbook (e.g. /home/john.doe/)
  • /usr/local/ansible/roles

 

It is noteworthy that if you have a role that resides in some other directory, say /usr/local/testing/roles, the role can be used by including the absolute path to the role in your playbook.

---
- hosts: all
  roles:
    - /usr/local/testing/roles/foo
...

 

It is also possible to pull in roles from a Git repository.

 


Variables

Each role can have it's own unique set of variables. Refer to Role Variables.

 


pre_tasks and post_tasks

When using the roles module, tasks will be performed in this order:

 


Perform tasks on the control node

Refer to run tasks on the control node if you want to run this module on your control node.




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