# Ansible is ignoring my group vars, hoping I'm doing something obviously wrong... **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Tags:** gcp\ **Created:** [May 9, 2020, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898 "2020-05-09T23:32:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![David\_Sudia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc348/32.png) [@David\_Sudia](https://forum.ansible.com/u/David_Sudia)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2020, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898/1 "2020-05-09T23:32:49Z")
Here is my directory structure: ` dba.yml (a playbook) inventory/ union.gcp.yml (a dynamic gcp inventory) group\_vars/ all/ vars.yml vault.yml dba/ vars.yml roles/ someroleshere/ ` The command I’m running is `$ ansible-playbook -i inventory --vault-password-file=/path/to/file dba.yml` Ansible reads my inventory just fine and connects to correct VM. The first variable it wants is `disks` which is an array of dicts to format and mount. Whether I put disks in the dba/vars.yml (the correct place for it to be) or all/vars.yml, Ansible gets to that variable and says it’s undefined. I have this big messy Ansible repo where everything works but it’s a mess, that I’m starting fresh on because I read back through the docs and realized I wasn’t following any best practices, and now I’m trying to follow them to the letter and can’t get it to work. Any help appreciated, thanks! ---
**Author:** ![vbotka](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/vbotka/32/359_2.png) [@vbotka](https://forum.ansible.com/u/vbotka)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2020, 2:54am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898/2 "2020-05-10T02:54:24Z")
> dba.yml (a playbook) > inventory/ >   union.gcp.yml (a dynamic gcp inventory) >   group\_vars/ >     all/ >       vars.yml >       vault.yml >     dba/ >       vars.yml > roles/ >   someroleshere/ > > $ ansible-playbook -i inventory --vault-password-file=/path/to/file dba.yml > > Whether I put disks in the dba/vars.yml (the correct place for it to be) or > all/vars.yml, Ansible gets to that variable and says it's undefined. There is nothing wrong with this   \> cat group\_vars/dba/vars.yml   disks: var from group\_vars/dba/vars.yml   \> cat inventory/hosts   [dba]   test\_01   test\_02   test\_03   \> cat dba.yml   - hosts: dba     tasks:       - debug:           var: disks   \> ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts dba.yml   PLAY [dba] \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*   TASK [debug] \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*   ok: [test\_02] =\> {       "disks": "var from group\_vars/dba/vars.yml"   }   ok: [test\_01] =\> {       "disks": "var from group\_vars/dba/vars.yml"   }   ok: [test\_03] =\> {       "disks": "var from group\_vars/dba/vars.yml"   } ---
**Author:** ![David\_Sudia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc348/32.png) [@David\_Sudia](https://forum.ansible.com/u/David_Sudia)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898/3 "2020-05-10T18:21:18Z")
Hello Vladimir, thank you for the response! My understanding was that group\_vars needed to be in the same directory as the inventory to work, but in your example it looks like group\_vars is one directory up, is that correct? ---
**Author:** ![vbotka](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/vbotka/32/359_2.png) [@vbotka](https://forum.ansible.com/u/vbotka)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898/4 "2020-05-10T19:31:32Z")
Hi David, ---
**Author:** ![David\_Sudia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc348/32.png) [@David\_Sudia](https://forum.ansible.com/u/David_Sudia)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-is-ignoring-my-group-vars-hoping-im-doing-something-obviously-wrong/32898/5 "2020-05-11T17:17:32Z")
To close this out, I realized from your example that in my debug statements I was putting the var in “{{}}”, which was giving me bad info and making it look like the var was undefined. Once I took it out of the quotes/curlies, I saw that the var I was trying to use was being overridden by a var provided by my host. So thank you for the help! Problem solved!