# Can Ansible pause on errors, allowing user to intervene, then proceed?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [May 5, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367 "2016-05-05T21:36:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Neil\_Hooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Neil\_Hooey](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Neil_Hooey)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367/1 "2016-05-05T21:36:02Z")

</div>

When initially trying to get an elaborate playbook to work, it’s very costly to repeat the process when a single task fails.

I’d like the playbook to automatically pause on a task that I haven’t set `ignore_errors: True` on, let me manually do what the task intended to do, then let the playbook abort that particular task and continue. This way I can make an presumptive fix to the failing task, but let Ansible continue with the rest of the tasks, without having to re-run the playbook for every single error.

Are using `retry` files the right way to do this, or is there another way?

- Neil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johannes\_Kastl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Johannes\_Kastl](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Johannes_Kastl)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 7:41am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367/2 "2016-05-06T07:41:06Z")

</div>

--start-at-task

[https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks\_startnstep.html](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_startnstep.html)

Johannes

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 2:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367/3 "2016-05-06T14:05:34Z")

</div>

You have a couple of options --step allows you to ‘step through’ each task, in 2.1 you also get the ‘debug’ strategy which is much closer to what you seem to want.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Neil\_Hooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Neil\_Hooey](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Neil_Hooey)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 5:42pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367/4 "2016-05-06T17:42:31Z")

</div>

Using `--start-at-task` won’t work because it won’t inherit the state from the beginning of the playbook. So facts that were set earlier will be undefined.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Neil\_Hooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Neil\_Hooey](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Neil_Hooey)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/can-ansible-pause-on-errors-allowing-user-to-intervene-then-proceed/21367/5 "2016-05-06T17:45:41Z")

</div>

What happens when using `--step` and a task fails, does the whole playbook abort?

The debug strategy looks like the ideal solution. when is Ansible 2.1 going to be released to Pip?