# Is it possible to use $HOSTNAME variable in "path:/"

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-hostname-variable-in-path/42775>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Created:** [May 20, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-hostname-variable-in-path/42775 "2025-05-20T19:36:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trt757](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@trt757](https://forum.ansible.com/u/trt757)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-hostname-variable-in-path/42775/1 "2025-05-20T19:36:01Z")

</div>

I’m writing a playbook and have never tried to do this particular thing I’m doing.

I have 500 host computers - all RHEL8  
Using ansible version: ansible [core 2.16.3]  
From a server, I’m configuring a playbook to reach out to all 500 computers and…

1. Determine if a $HOSTNAME.key file exists
2. if It doesn’t, it will scp the file from the server (which is a Cert Authority server)

Ultimately the goal is to check for the existence of a $HOSTNAME.key and .crt file, and if they don’t exist, create them, and copy them to the remote host. For reasons of revocation, we definitely don’t want a playbook to create certs every time, when they definitely do exist.

I tried this with just a plain file and it worked fine. I created “file1” in /tmp on the CA. I ran the playbook, it didn’t find file1 on my one host (only testing with 1 host for now), so it copied the file over to /tmp on the host.

Then I changed the playbook to the actual file I want to check for. The path statement is written like this:  
tasks:

- name: Check for $HOSTNAME.key  
stat:  
path: /tmp/$HOSTNAME.key  
register: key

- name: Report if file exists  
debug:  
msg: “the file exists”  
when: key.stat.exists == True

The problem is that the file does exist, but it keeps reporting that it’s skipping the debug/msg portion, finding it to be False. Yet the file is in /tmp on the host and I’ve even used chmod 777 in case of a permissions issue.

I can’t see what I’m doing wrong. Any ideas anyone? Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon81884396](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b782af/32.png) [@anon81884396](https://forum.ansible.com/u/anon81884396)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-hostname-variable-in-path/42775/2 "2025-05-20T19:42:44Z")

</div>

Ansible is treating $HOSTNAME as literal $HOSTNAME, so it is probably unlikely to find a file named literally $HOSTNAME.key in /tmp. Ansible does not reference variables in this way; you’ll want to use ansible facts, in this case

```auto
{{ ansible_hostname }}

```

So your playbook would resemble the following:

```auto
- name: 'Playbook to detect hostname.key files'
  hosts: 'localhost'
  gather_facts: true
  tasks:
    - name: "Check for {{ ansible_hostname }}.key"
      ansible.builtin.stat:
        path: "/tmp/{{ ansible_hostname }}.key"
      register: key

    - name: "Report if file exists"
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: “the file exists”
      when: key.stat.exists == True

```

It’s also good practice to fully qualify your module names, like ansible.builtin.debug as opposed to just debug.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trt757](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@trt757](https://forum.ansible.com/u/trt757)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-hostname-variable-in-path/42775/3 "2025-05-20T20:07:37Z")

</div>

Thank you. I just stumbled onto ansible facts and this seems to also work in the “/path” statement

path: /tmp/ {{ ansible\_facts[‘hostname’] }}.domain-name.key

But what you wrote above looks more elegant I think.