Ansible fails to execute a playbook when the value for 'hosts' is defined somewhere in inventory

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1

I want to define the target hosts for my playbooks somewhere in the inventory itself. But apparently, Ansible is resolving target hosts before it is finished loading the inventory. When i ‘include’ the file with these vars, it works just fine.

inventoryFile.yaml

`
[machines]
one ansible_host=000
two ansible_host=000
three ansible_host=000

`

group_vars/all/targets.yaml

`
hostList1:

  • one
  • two
    hostList2:
  • two
  • three
    `

playbook.yaml

`

2

The 'hostList1' inventory variable is not available until AFTER the
hosts: is processed, this is a chicken/egg issue.

Inventory variables are flattened per host, so only once you have a
host can you query the value of the variable.

`hosts:` defines which hosts are available, as such it cannot depend
on a host nor a variable associated to a host.

3

So is there no way to define something like ‘global’ variables along with the inventory ? I thought the implicit ‘all’ group can be treated like global variables.

4

Why don’t you simply use the power of the inventory file itself:
[group:children]
child1
child2

[child1]
host1
host2

[child2]
host3
host4

and use global vars or per host vars in the appropriate files?

N.B: the inventory is an “ini” file not a “yaml” one [inventoryFile.yaml].

5

No, inventory vars are always flattened to the host, 'all' is a way to
assign a variable to all hosts, but it is still 'host level'.

Use vars/vars_files or extra_vars instead.

6

N.B: the inventory is an "ini" file not a "yaml" one [inventoryFile.yaml].

it can be either, Ansible support YAML format for inventory also