Limit groups a play is run on from the playbook source code

Question

The goal is to limit the group of hosts a play inside a playbook is run on. The below code doesn't limit the groups to group cluster and sometimes the below playbook is run on localhost

- hosts: all:!localhost
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    ...

The inventory file is below:

[localhost]
127.0.0.1  ansible_connection=local
[cluster]
ip1
ip2
ip3

Tried - hosts: cluster, however, play still runs on localhost sometimes.

There's option to limit the groups via cli:

ansible-playbook playbooks/PLAYBOOK_NAME.yml --limit 'all:!localhost'

My goal is to limit groups a play is run on from the playbook source code.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 13 '19 at 08:30

0

- name: Ensure dir exists
  file:
    path: example/path
    state: directory
    owner: user
    group: group
    mode: 0755
  when: inventory_hostname in groups['cluster']

The following does the trick. It runs the task only on the group you wish.

when: inventory_hostname in groups['cluster']

answered Mar 13 '19 at 08:30

Mr ASD

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thanks. however, what u showed is task limit, i need play limit – rok Mar 13 '19 at 08:35

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '19 at 08:48

Then either run on the desired group of hosts

    - hosts: cluster,cluster1,cluster2
      gather_facts: no
      tasks:
      ...

or in the inventories, you can group the groups of hosts by:

    [cluster]
    ip1
    ip2
    ip3

    [clusters:children]
    cluster
    cluster1

and then run the playbook on the clusters group

Limit groups a play is run on from the playbook source code

2 Answers2