problem excluding group from task in playbook

Archives Ansible Project
1

Dear all,

I’m trying probably something very simple but can’t get it to work. I’m trying to exclude a group from a task. I have a playbook for all hosts (hosts: all) but in one particular task I want to exclude a group, how do I do that?

I know I can do something like:

hosts: all:!ntpservers

but that also excludes the ntpserver from all the other tasks.

This is what I’m trying to do:

I’m installing an ntp daemon on all systems but want to install the configuration ntpd.conf on all systems EXCEPT for the servers in the group “ntpservers”. I want to install a different configuration file on those servers because these will become the real ntp servers, the others will become clients.

I have this so far:

2

​add this conditional to the task where it should not run:​

   ​when: inventory_hostname not in groups.ntpservers​

Serge

3

Serge,

Thanx a lot, working like a charme.

Perhaps a stupid question for a newbie like me but where can i find all these kind of parameters?
I never ask a question before googling and trying but in this case i spent 2 days searching and couldn’t find anything (which also could mean i searched for the wrong keywords :slight_smile: )

Kind regards,
Oliver.

4

​the groups magic variable ​is mentioned here:
http://www.ansibleworks.com/docs/playbooks_variables.html#magic-variables-and-how-to-access-information-about-other-hosts

5

Often easier to just start a new play;

  • hosts: group1:!group2

Targets all hosts in group1 that are not in group2

6

Michael,

I believe you are right it’s much easier to start a new play and that was also the first solution i found. Because I’m just a newbie to ansible i tried to keep things consistent and place everything which is default on a server (host file, resolve.conf , ntp.conf etc) into a playbook “common” and the applications in their own playbook. Problem was that i wanted to run both a ntp server as a ntp client. Right now everything works perfectly but i will consider your approach when i go along and everything start to become too complicated.

By the way, till now i really like ansible.

Thanks,

Kind regards.

Oiver