# Retrying notify handlers on subsequent runs?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/retrying-notify-handlers-on-subsequent-runs/12144>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** ansible-project\
**Created:** [December 18, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/retrying-notify-handlers-on-subsequent-runs/12144 "2012-12-18T00:33:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/retrying-notify-handlers-on-subsequent-runs/12144/1 "2012-12-18T00:33:30Z")

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Yup, it's been brought up before -- a long time ago, actually, and  
then it wasn't talked about for a while.

I don't think ansible runs should keep state, but there probably needs  
to be a way such that if a handler is tagged and you run the tag, the  
handler runs.

Are there other ways that people can think of, in terms of  
playbook/CLI interface (not implementation so much) that seem  
intuitive?

(What Would Other Config Management Tool Do?)

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**Author:** ![Norman\_Harman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Norman\_Harman](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Norman_Harman)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/retrying-notify-handlers-on-subsequent-runs/12144/2 "2012-12-18T20:02:00Z")

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If I’m understanding correctly… I wanted something similar to this the other day. Automatically noticing handler failed and run it “next time” is not good, state and other reasons. But, once seeing handler failure I would like ability to simply rerun handler. It should be very explicit. An option to ansible-playbook similar to tags.

–trigger [,\<handler name, …]

It triggers the named handler from the playbook and no other tasks are run. For simplicity, --trigger and --tags are mutually exclusive.

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2012, 10:45pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/retrying-notify-handlers-on-subsequent-runs/12144/3 "2012-12-18T22:45:07Z")

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I'd probably say it should be --handler, assuming it didn't run any  
non-handler tasks and only ran handlers.

Reasonable?