Troubleshooting in Ansible

Important Points

In this section, we will look at some instances to help us comprehend some concepts.

If you are not citing a variable-starting argument. As an example,

vars: 
  age_path: {{soham.name}}/demo/ 
{{soham.name}} 

This will result in an error.

Solution

vars: 
  age_path: "{{soham.name}}/demo/" - marked in yellow is fix. 
 
Using Register -> Copy the code into a yml file, say test.yml, and run it  
--- 
#Testing 
- hosts: tomcat-node 
  tasks: 
 
  - shell: /usr/bin/uptime 
      register: myvar 
      - name: Just debugging usage 
        debug: var = myvar 

When you run this code with the command Ansible-playbook -i hosts test.yml, I receive the following result.

If you look at the yaml, you will notice that we have registered the output of a command into a variable - myvar - and then just printed the output.

The yellow text describes a characteristic of the variable -myvar that can be utilized for additional flow control. This way, we can learn about the properties of a specific variable that are revealed. The following debug command can assist.

$ ansible-playbook -i hosts test.yml
PLAY [tomcat-node] ***************************************************************
**************** ****************************************************************
*************** ****************************** 

TASK [Gathering Facts] *****************************************************************
************** *****************************************************************
************** ************************** 
Saturday 27 August 2022  23:26:08 +0530 (0:00:00.051) 0:00:00.051 ******* 
ok: [server1] 

TASK [command] ******************************************************************
************* ******************************************************************
************* ********************************** 
Saturday 27 August 2022  23:26:10 +0530 (0:00:01.697) 0:00:01.748 ******* 
changed: [server1] 

TASK [Just debugging usage] ******************************************************************
************* ******************************************************************
************* ********************* 
Saturday 27 August 2022  23:26:10 +0530 (0:00:00.226) 0:00:01.974 ******* 
ok: [server1] => { 
 "myvar": { 
     "changed": true, 
     "cmd": "/usr/bin/uptime", 
     "delta": "0:00:00.011306", 
     "end": "2022-08-27 23:26:10.424647", 
     "rc": 0, 
     "start": "2022-08-27 23:26:10.413341", 
     "stderr": "", 
     "stderr_lines": [], 
     "stdout": " 23:26:10 up 7 days, 35 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.18, 0.15, 0.14", 
     "stdout_lines": [ 
       " 23:26:10 up 7 days, 35 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.18, 0.15, 0.14" 
     ] 
 } 
} 

PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************
**********************************************************************************
************************************** 
server1 : ok = 3    changed = 1    unreachable = 0    failed = 0 

 Common Playbook Issues

In this part, we'll go over a few frequent playbook concerns. The problems are:

• Quoting 
• Indentation 

Playbook is written in yaml, and the two faults mentioned above are the most common in yaml/playbook.

Yaml does not support tab-based indentation but does support space-based indentation, so be cautious.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Ansible a programming language?

Ansible is a configuration management system built in Python that employs a declarative markup language to describe configurations.

What is Ansible used for?

Ansible can be used to provision your environment's underlying infrastructure, network devices, virtualized hosts, bare metal servers, and hypervisors. It can also install services, add compute hosts, and provision cloud resources, services, and applications.

What tool is Ansible?

Ansible® is a free and open-source IT automation software that automates configuration management, application deployment, provisioning, orchestration, and a variety of other manual IT tasks.

Is Ansible based on Python?

Ansible is developed in Python and has a relatively short learning curve. Ansible is a straightforward installation process and does not require any additional software, servers, or client daemons. It maintains nodes over SSH by default and is parallel.

What is the Ansible playbook?

Ansible Playbooks are a set of tasks that are executed automatically against hosts. Your Ansible inventory is made up of host groups. Each module in an Ansible Playbook is in charge of a specific task. Each module has metadata indicating when and where a task is completed, as well as which user completes it.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed troubleshooting. Also, we have discussed the modules that can be used to troubleshoot problems in Ansible Framework.

If you want to learn more, check out our articles on Ansible Interview Questions1, Ansible Interview Question2, and Ansible Interview Questions3.

Happy Coding!