# Thoughts on lock files for Ansible runs

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/thoughts-on-lock-files-for-ansible-runs/18460>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [June 10, 2015, 2:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/thoughts-on-lock-files-for-ansible-runs/18460 "2015-06-10T14:56:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Adam\_Kosmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dc4da7/32.png) [@Adam\_Kosmin](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Adam_Kosmin)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 2:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/thoughts-on-lock-files-for-ansible-runs/18460/1 "2015-06-10T14:56:56Z")

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Greets,

I’m coming into Ansible from a Puppet background and have questions with regard to whether or not the idea of “lock files” is even appropriate. As I’m sure many here know, the puppet agent handled creating this file in order to avoid multiple overlapping runs. Of course, that’s a completely different model (client/server) but I’d be really interested to hear back from this community on this topic. Given that Ansible is essentially just firing out commands over ssh in a serial fashion, I personally see no need for lock files. Of course, I could be missing something…

thoughts, considerations, use cases, and further questions welcome…

Best,  
Adam

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**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/thoughts-on-lock-files-for-ansible-runs/18460/2 "2015-06-10T14:59:51Z")

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It might make sense in some cases, but in others it is counter productive:

For example, admin A is configuring the tomcat.xml file, admin B is  
adding a new dev user, they should not lock each other.