Inventory group_vars loading behavior when inventory is directory

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1

So, I’ve experimented a bit with an inventory as directory, inventory group_vars and dir/file hierarchy there of. What I have encountered is this:

/some/ansible/project
|-- playbook.yml           # playbook
|-- group_vars             # playbook level group_vars
|   `-- somegroup          # loaded
`-- inventory              # inventory directory
    |-- group_vars         # inventory group_vars
    |   `-- somegroup      # loaded
    `-- my_hosts           # some arbitrary subdirectory
        |-- group_vars     # inventory group_vars?
        |   `-- somegroup  # *ignored*!
        |-- somehost1      # loaded
        |-- somehost2      # loaded
        `-- somehost3      # loaded

The command line used is ansible-playbook -i inventory/ playbook.yml. Version used is 2.16.7.

Is this the expected behavior?

To be more clear. It seems that Ansible loads inventory group_vars only from a group_vars directory that is a direct descendent (first sub directory) of the inventory directory. I was convinced that Ansible would load group_vars from any group_vars directory anywhere down the hierarchy inside the inventory directory… and that it worked at some point :face_with_raised_eyebrow: In other words, I expected Ansible to also load inventory/my_hosts/group_vars/*.

2

The host_group_vars vars plugin loads host and group variable files by searching paths relative to the inventory source or the playbook file. So your nested “group_vars” under the my_hosts diir would be ignored.

See:

3

The documentation is not very clear on this. It does not specifically say that. It describes the behavior in case inventory is a file. In that case, group_vars is expected to be right beside inventory file in the same directory. On the other hand, when inventory is a directory, group_vars is expected to be inside an inventory directory.

My expectation was that when Ansible goes trough inventory directory, and parses each file it founds, that it looks for a group_vars and host_vars relative to each file found.

I’m struggling to understand the inventory parsing code in Ansible so any insight from someone who knows Ansible under the hood is very appreciated.

4

I agree that the documentation for using an inventory dir could be clearer. However, the rules still apply whether it’s a file or dir to my knowlegde. So your group_vars that are relative to your diirectory would be applied. Also your “my_hosts” dir has its own “relative” group_vars which would apply. Your nested group_vars of my_hosts is not relative which is why it doesn’t get applied. I can’t speak to why. Maybe one of the devs can chime in here.

5

While this may not answer your question, it’s also a good resource re: inventories.

6

Open issue about this The interplay between host_vars and group_vars dirs and inventory dirs is not fully documented · Issue #2462 · ansible/ansible-documentation · GitHub