# Extra time spent between plays in 1.4+

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/extra-time-spent-between-plays-in-1-4/14254>\
**Category:** Ansible Developer\
**Created:** [January 3, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/extra-time-spent-between-plays-in-1-4/14254 "2014-01-03T00:27:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jesse\_Keating](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@Jesse\_Keating](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jesse_Keating)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/extra-time-spent-between-plays-in-1-4/14254/1 "2014-01-03T00:27:57Z")

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So I've got a large inventory set I'm working with, on the order of 20K entries via a plugin.

I'm doing some testing with just one host in use, so a --limit down to a single host.

I've created three identical plays in a book, which just do a command: sleep 1.

With 1.2.3 this execution would take 30~s

Same with 1.3.4

with 1.4.3 this goes up to 1m40s

Has something changed with what ansible does between plays? I hadn't noticed this at first as I was working with one of my much smaller inventories.

Can anybody verify what I'm seeing? If so I'll happily file an issue.

-jlk

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/extra-time-spent-between-plays-in-1-4/14254/2 "2014-01-03T00:39:28Z")

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Lots have changed all over, but we don’t have access at all to your environment to know where to start.

You have an inventory script in play, I think, but we don’t know the particular parameters of it.

It would probably best if you can identify what is thinking about things on your end through some profiling.

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**Author:** ![Jesse\_Keating](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@Jesse\_Keating](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jesse_Keating)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/extra-time-spent-between-plays-in-1-4/14254/3 "2014-01-03T00:47:14Z")

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I'm trying to bisect between 1.3.4 and 1.4.0 to find where things start going downhill.

As for inventory, yes it's a inventory script, with maybe 12 high level groups which each hold 10~20 sub-groups each, with hosts being in those subgroups. Variables at the sub-group level, and a tiny amount of hostvars defined via \_meta.

Doesn't matter where the action happens, could be a local task, there is still a long pause after a the task completes before the next play header is printed (18~seconds), and a shorter pause between the play header and the actual task header (5~seconds).

I haven't been able to easily capture what's going on with an strace yet, I'll keep working on it.

-jlk