rax module - no host-pattern?

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1

Hi all,

I’m trying to use the rax module from the command line to create a new cloudserver. But I can’t figure out what to use as the “host-pattern”. I’m creating a new server, so there is no “host” as such! The docs don’t seem to explain what you’re supposed to do in this situation. I tried “localhost” but it just said “No hosts matched”

Any ideas please?

Many thanks, Seumas

2

You will want to put localhost in inventory.

We have an action item to implicitly allow localhost to not be in inventory when specified directly in the future.

Easy enough!

3

Hi Michael,

Thanks for that! Seems to at least give me a different error now, but that’s to do with pyrax :slight_smile: Might I suggest that the documentation be updated to specify that modules that don’t take a hostname should be given the hostname “local”? (maybe it does say it somewhere, but I couldn’t find it)

Cheers, Seumas

4

It is possible that you might want to run modules from some other server (for instance, a more secured central server that has the authentication keys), so in that case we can’t hard-code any module to only run locally.

5

Hi James,

I’m not sure I understand this. What’s the effect of specifying a different hostname/pattern for the rax module?

Why would it need one at all?

6

Exactly what James said above.

You may wish to communicate with rax from a central server.

It doesn’t just apply to rax, it could be any set of machines where you want to log in and initiate API traffic from a specific point.

7

Ok, I think my mental model of ansible was wrong. I was thinking of it as “do something to these servers” rather than “run this module on these servers”. A small, but profound, difference :wink:

Thanks for the help!