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Ansible inventory

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The inventory can be:

  • a file
  • a directory
  • an executable

The inventory location is mentioned in the ansible.cfg file with the inventory keyword:

[defaults]
inventory      = /etc/ansible/hosts

format of an inventory file
#

The inventory:

  • file is an ini style file with group names as section headers.
  • directory is a directory with a collection of such
  • executable outputs a json type output

The inventory accepts regular expressions, ranges are mentioned as [0:9] not as [0-9] and IP address format does not accept normal like 10.0.0.0/24.

Example #1:

[group1]
server1 ansible_connection=local
server2

[group2]
server3
server4
192.168.[0:1].[128:250]

[group3:children]
group1
group2

Warning

In the inventory directory the files and executables are sourced : in order. This means if a groups children aren’t mentioned yet the run will fail.

note

var files vs include_vars