# with\_items passed individually and as list **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [June 19, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987 "2013-06-19T12:11:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![martin\_f\_krafft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@martin\_f\_krafft](https://forum.ansible.com/u/martin_f_krafft)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/1 "2013-06-19T12:11:31Z")
Hello, I have a simple playbook that just defines an APT task to purge packages provided as with\_items list.   tasks:     - name: remove packages       apt: pkg={{item}} state=absent purge=yes update\_cache=no       with\_items:         - puppet         - puppet-common         […] Running this across a set of hosts, I got the following, inconsistent output (abridged):   ok: [diamond.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet)   ok: [arnold.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet)   ok: [arnold.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet-common)   ok: [diamond.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet-common)   […]   changed: [jugband.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet,puppet-common,facter,libopenssl-ruby,libshadow-ruby1.8,libxmlrpc-ruby,libruby,libruby1.8,libaugeas-ruby1.8,libdpkg-ruby1.8,libhttp-access2-ruby1.8,libuconv-ruby1.8,libxml-parser-ruby1.8,ri1.8,facter,ruby-json,ruby1.8,ruby-shadow)   ok: [vizier.madduck.net] =\> (item=puppet,puppet-common,facter,libopenssl-ruby,libshadow-ruby1.8,libxmlrpc-ruby,libruby,libruby1.8,libaugeas-ruby1.8,libdpkg-ruby1.8,libhttp-access2-ruby1.8,libuconv-ruby1.8,libxml-parser-ruby1.8,ri1.8,facter,ruby-json,ruby1.8,ruby-shadow) That is to say: some hosts iterated through the package list one-by-one, while others received a list. What determines this difference? How can I always pass lists? Thanks, ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/2 "2013-06-19T15:13:39Z")
I suspect you are running recent 1.3 code against a 1.2 module directory and the module doesn’t have the WITH\_ITEMS\_WANTS\_LIST string in it, which is the new way we tell modules what they can do in series. ---
**Author:** ![martin\_f\_krafft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@martin\_f\_krafft](https://forum.ansible.com/u/martin_f_krafft)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/3 "2013-06-19T16:26:57Z")
also sprach Michael DeHaan \ [2013.06.19.1713 +0200]: > I suspect you are running recent 1.3 code against a 1.2 module > directory and the module doesn't have the WITH\_ITEMS\_WANTS\_LIST > string in it, which is the new way we tell modules what they can > do in series. I am running only from source and there are no modules installed anywhere else. ansible-playbook 1.3 (devel 0bd92d8196) last updated 2013/06/19 17:39:33 (GMT +200) I verified that the module that gets executed also contains WITH\_ITEMS\_WANTS\_LIST On a playbook run, some hosts produce one ok: line for each with\_list item, and other hosts produce one ok: for all items, specifying a list. There are no differences I can see between the hosts, i.e. they all run Debian 7.0 with identical Python versions and package sets. Very curiously, the set of hosts for which the APT runs will display individually and the set of hosts displaying lists is non-constant, i.e. it differs between runs. It's weird, isn't it? Could this be a bug or maybe a possible control path in the code wasn't updated? I investigated a bit and especially had a look at what happens at lib/ansible/runner/\_\_init\_\_.py:419, and I think I found a symptom: self.module\_with\_list starts off False for the first batch of $forks hosts, and then turns True, so hosts 6 through n will get lists passed to the APT module, but hosts 1 through 5 won't. I suspect that this is a multiprocessing problem. How does the runner piece this all together? How can I help debug this further? Cheers, ---
**Author:** ![Serge\_van\_Ginderacht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@Serge\_van\_Ginderacht](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Serge_van_Ginderacht)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/4 "2013-06-19T21:02:17Z")
​possibly [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/3267](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/3267) ?​ ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Sturdivant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Scott\_Sturdivant](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Scott_Sturdivant)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 9:06pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/5 "2013-06-19T21:06:48Z")
Nah, that’s just a documentation gotcha. I also am not seeing the expected behavior of a single module execution over a list of items. Digging through the code, I saw that in runner/ **init**.py module\_with\_list was set to True _after_ the module was copied over. I got in over my head and couldn’t figure out how it was supposedly / or should be set prior to executing the copy step. Martin seems to have made more progress than me! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/6 "2013-06-19T21:16:05Z")
I suspect you too are pointing at 1.2 module paths, but I’ll test it. The 1.3 modules have a WITH\_ITEMS\_AS\_LIST in their resource that allows them to know to merge things together and do everything in one pass. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/7 "2013-06-19T22:55:29Z")
I’ve confirmed the 1.3 pull request that intended to streamline this doesn’t quite work. Working on this, stay tuned 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/8 "2013-06-19T23:03:35Z")
Commit reverted, back to normal. ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca1)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2013, 11:13pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-items-passed-individually-and-as-list/12987/9 "2013-06-19T23:13:30Z")
mybad! modules worked but I didn’t check that they worked with a list. I didn’t realize they would fall back to single item.