How do you stop Ansible from creating .retry files in the home directory?

Question

When Ansible has problems running plays against a host, it will output the name of the host into a file in the user's home directory ending in '.retry'. These are often not used and just cause clutter, is there a way to turn them off or put them in a different directory?

Asfand Qazi · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-10T09:21:39.963

202

There are two options that you can add to the [defaults] section of the ansible.cfg file that will control whether or not .retry files are created and where they are created.

[defaults]
...
retry_files_enabled = True  # Create them - the default
retry_files_enabled = False # Do not create them

retry_files_save_path = "~/" # The directory they will go into
                             # (home directory by default)

edited Jul 10 '15 at 09:21

answered Jul 09 '15 at 13:25

Asfand Qazi

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Note that this only works for Ansible 1.9 and newer: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/commit/c15b47fb7bbcca965089afc15c2dacf2f8120758 – hudolejev Sep 21 '15 at 07:25
5

Note that retry files aren't created by default starting from Ansible 2.8: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/porting_guides/porting_guide_2.8.html#retry-file-creation-default – Slava Semushin Dec 14 '19 at 18:57

score 65 · Answer 2 · edited May 24 '23 at 08:11

65

You can disable creation of retry file in ansible by modifying ansible configuration file.

[defaults]
...
retry_files_enabled = False

Ansible looks for configuration file as follows

./ansible.cfg
~/.ansible.cfg
/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

Make sure to add your changes to the appropriate config file.

edited May 24 '23 at 08:11

Per Lundberg

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answered May 16 '16 at 06:58

AnshBikram

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Tomas Tomecek · Answer 3 · 2019-05-29T10:23:36.943

12

You can also turn the retry files off by setting an environment variable ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED to 0:

$ ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED=0 ansible-playbook ...

edited May 29 '19 at 10:23

answered Feb 17 '19 at 16:41

Tomas Tomecek

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 30 '18 at 16:14

0

Funny enough, I had a similar issue with the retry file, but as I am working with a whole team, I'd rather not touch the config.

What I decided to do instead was to remove the retry file(s) as part of the run from within the playbook:

#Clean up the admin node - basic housekeeping
- hosts:
  - admin
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:
  - name: remove retry file
    file:
      path: "{{ item }}"
      state: absent
    with_fileglob:
      - "{{playbook_dir}}/*.retry"

answered Oct 30 '18 at 16:14

Lefty G Balogh

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I think especially in a team, using a common and sane config is much better than working around it this way, which is also kinda config, but less obvious. – Axel Beckert Jul 21 '20 at 14:53
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You are right. This is definitely not for times when you can do it properly. It grew out of desperation when you have 27 other people on the team in 7 different teams under 10 different managers... – Lefty G Balogh Jul 23 '20 at 06:49

score -1 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 02 '19 at 16:14

-1

Uncomment the lines in the default ansible.cfg file to

retry_files_enabled = True
retry_files_save_path = ~/.ansible-retry

edited Dec 02 '19 at 16:14

DanielM

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answered Dec 02 '19 at 15:01

Sarangz

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This only moves the clutter elsewhere. – Axel Beckert Jul 21 '20 at 14:51

How do you stop Ansible from creating .retry files in the home directory?

5 Answers5