# Ansible Tower and Dummy Hosts/Facts

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-tower-and-dummy-hosts-facts/32116>\
**Category:** AWX Project\
**Created:** [February 1, 2020, 2:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-tower-and-dummy-hosts-facts/32116 "2020-02-01T14:39:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Glen\_Collins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Glen\_Collins](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Glen_Collins)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2020, 2:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-tower-and-dummy-hosts-facts/32116/1 "2020-02-01T14:39:16Z")

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Hello.

I am currently running my playbooks using Ansible Tower. I’m trying to work with facts as a method to store information that I can keep around until I want to get rid of it. Use it in multiple playbooks, etc. While I have it fully functional I’m wondering how I can clear the facts to that host in the inventory that’s not a valid host. So here is what I do…

My hostname in tower is called: fake\_host

I’m using the set\_fact module and delegate\_to function to set the facts in the fake\_host hostname.

- name: Set facts  
set\_fact:  
dummy\_fact: “Hello world”  
cacheable: yes  
delegate\_to: fake\_host  
delegate\_facts: true

This sets the fact in the hostname fake\_host just fine. But if I want to clear the fact, I cannot because it’s not targeted by the playbook. So it’ll never clear the cache. The manner I tried is:

- name: clear fact cache  
meta: clear\_facts  
delegate\_to: fake\_host

The meta tag does not obviously work with the delegate\_to function since it’s not clearing the facts.

I have tried to target the playbook using host: fake\_host but the playbook run tells me the host is invalid or something to that effect. Can someone tell me if this is even possible to do? Possible to target directly?

If not, I’ll have to find other ways to keep this information for usage in other playbooks. And while I can save the facts to a file, it’s something I’ve decided not to do at this time.

Thanks.

Glen

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Glen\_Collins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Glen\_Collins](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Glen_Collins)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2020, 2:42pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-tower-and-dummy-hosts-facts/32116/2 "2020-02-01T14:42:12Z")

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By the way, I’m using Tower 3.5.4.

Glen