Trying to understand retrieving environment variables on a remote server

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1

I am new to ansible an I am running through some tutorials. I got stuck with trying to enumerate a specific variable on a remote host. On a "remote host: (RH9.6 in Virtualbox) I set an environment variable, i,e, export JAVA_HOME=/opt/tmp . In my yaml file on the control node I have ‘gather_facts: yes’. Below is the code:

  • name: variable example
    hosts: 192.168.86.43
    gather_facts: yes

    tasks:

    • name: show variable values

    By defaault ‘lookup’ enumerates env variables from locaal prcessor machine

    You need to gather facts on remote machine and extract from there, use ansible_env

    task variables have precedence over play variables
    debug:
    msg: “Java is installed at: {{ absible_env.JAVA_HOME }}”

When I run this I get ‘the task includes an option with an undefined variable…ansible_env’ .
What am I missing? If I enumerate all variables it works, sor of. If I enumerate all variables it does not include the variable I set with the export command. If I go to the remote machine and type ‘env’ and I see the variable i set. If I choose to enumerate ‘ansible_env.HOSTNAME’ which I KNOW is there I get the same error. Spent way too much time on this.

Help! Ty. Ignore the text in the middle of this post , they were comments

2

How are you exporting the variables you want ansible to have access to? A command like export JAVA_HOME=/opt/tmp is only valid for the user session that created it. For it to be accessible to ansible, it would need to be set in for that login shell.

3

Not sure i follow “ how are you exporting…”. I am not . I gave export as an example of how I set the variable on the target machine. I “kind of” understand the problem might be context. There is a user called ‘Alan’ on the target machine and logged in as that user I ran the export command to set a variable. I then tried running the Ansible playbook as described to try and enumerate that variable and it fails. How would I export all variables then via Ansible?

4

setup provides you with ansible_env. For example,

    - setup:
        gather_subset: env
    - debug:
        var: ansible_env

gives

    ansible_env:
        BLOCKSIZE: K
        HOME: /home/admin
        LANG: C.UTF-8
        LOGNAME: admin
        MAIL: /var/mail/admin
        MM_CHARSET: UTF-8
        PATH: /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/home/admin/bin
        PWD: /home/admin
        SHELL: /bin/sh
        SSH_CLIENT: 10.1.0.27 33152 22
        SSH_CONNECTION: 10.1.0.27 33152 10.1.0.157 22
        TERM: su
        USER: admin

The command sh -c set provides you with the same (with the addition of IFS and PS*)

    - command: sh -c set
      register: out
    - debug:
        var: out.stdout

gives

    out.stdout: |-
        BLOCKSIZE=K
        HOME=/home/admin
        IFS=$' \t
        '
        LANG=C.UTF-8
        LOGNAME=admin
        MAIL=/var/mail/admin
        MM_CHARSET=UTF-8
        OPTIND=1
        PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/home/admin/bin
        PPID=53530
        PS1='$ '
        PS2='> '
        PS4='+ '
        PWD=/home/admin
        SHELL=/bin/sh
        SSH_CLIENT='10.1.0.27 33152 22'
        SSH_CONNECTION='10.1.0.27 33152 10.1.0.157 22'
        TERM=su
        USER=admin

Try

    - command: bash -c set
      register: out
    - debug:
        var: out.stdout

You can use the environment keyword if JAVA_HOME isn’t set. For example,

    - command: sh -c 'echo Java is installed at $JAVA_HOME'
      register: out
      environment:
        JAVA_HOME: /opt/tmp
    - debug:
        var: out.stdout

gives

    out.stdout: Java is installed at /opt/tmp
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