How to save whole ansible_facts to file

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1

Hi,

Running Ansible 2.4, I am trying to save all Ansible facts to a file, with a task like this:

`

  • name: save all facts to host specific file
    copy:
    content: “{{ ansible_facts }}”
    dest: “/some/directory/{{ ansible_fqdn }}”
    delegate_to: localhost
    `

However it fails with the error “‘ansible_facts’ is undefined”.

Do you think there is a workaround? I really do not want to have to select facts one by one…

Regards,
Yvan

2

The facts is not stored under "ansible_facts" but "vars" so use

  content: '{{ vars }}'

3

Thanks for the hint!

I forgot to say that I want to save all Ansible facts host by host, so “{{ vars }}” contains to much data for me. Here is what I found to remove vars from master and other hosts:

`

  • name: save all facts to host specific file
    copy:
    content: “{{ ansible_delegated_vars[inventory_hostname].vars | to_nice_json }}”
    dest: "/some/directory/{{ ansible_fqdn }}"
    delegate_to: localhost
    `

This still contains variables from inventory, but it is better than nothing…

4

Thanks for the hint!

I forgot to say that I want to save all Ansible facts *host by host*, so
"{{ vars }}" contains to much data for me. Here is what I found to remove
vars from master and other hosts:

Look into the facts caching feature of Ansible, that will only store the gathered facts and not inventory in one file per host.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbooks_variables.html#fact-caching

  - name: save all facts to host specific file
    copy:
      content: "{{ ansible_delegated_vars[inventory_hostname].vars |
to_nice_json }}"
      dest: "/some/directory/{{ ansible_fqdn }}"
    delegate_to: localhost

This still contains variables from inventory, but it is better than nothing…

This will also only store the gathered facts and not inventory

  - setup:
    register: setupvar

  - copy:
      content: '{{ setupvar.ansible_facts }}'
      dest: /some/directory/{{ ansible_fqdn }}
    delegate_to: localhost

5

I did not think about registering results of “setup” task, that is perfect!

Thanks,
Yvan

6

Use the jsonfile ansible cache, it will automatically store facts (and
only facts) into files.

In 2.5 we do have facts under ansible_facts and we hope to ONLY have
them there in the future, currently it is a toggle to allow them in
'main vars' or not.