Custom Fact - Drill down into each variable

Archives Ansible Project
1

Created a custom fact which only seems to work when not executable - etc/ansible/facts.d/preference.fact

[new facts]
material = concrete
structure = square

When the preference.fact is set to executable I get the following error -

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {“changed”: false, “cmd”: “/etc/ansible/facts.d/preference.fact”, “failed”: true, “msg”: “[Errno 8] Exec format error”, “rc”: 8}

Fixed that by setting the fact to not executable and the playbook runs fine

My second question is how to drill into the fact to reference each fact separately if i need to ?
I cant seem to drill in any further than - debug: msg="Custom facts are {{ansible_local.preference}}

Playbook

2

Created a custom fact which only seems to work when not executable -
etc/ansible/facts.d/preference.fact

[new facts]
material = concrete
structure = square

I highly recommend against using spaces in fact keys.
You must likely will have a lot of problems if you do.

When the preference.fact is set to executable I get the following error -

TASK [Gathering Facts]
*********************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd":
"/etc/ansible/facts.d/preference.fact", "failed": true, "msg": "[Errno 8]
Exec format error", "rc": 8}

Fixed that by setting the fact to not executable and the playbook runs fine

This is as expected.
If a file is executable Ansible will try to run the file, and it need to a valid program/script.
When the file is not an executable Ansible will read it content.

My second question is how to drill into the fact to reference each fact
separately if i need to ?
I cant seem to drill in any further than - debug: msg="Custom facts are
{{ansible_local.preference}}

Playbook
---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: on
  tasks:
    - name: Display custom facts
      debug: msg="Custom facts are {{ansible_local.preference.new facts}}"

The space is causing the the problem.
To make it work with space you would need to use square brackets and not the dot notation.

{{ ansible_local.preference.['new facts'] }}

3

Thanks. It works now

Changed the playbook line to this and it works fine → debug: msg=“Custom facts are {{ansible_local.preference.general.material}}”

Output -

PLAY [localhost] ***************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Display custom facts] ****************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
“changed”: false,
“msg”: “Custom facts are concrete”