Ansible-inventory-file-examples

Examples and counter-examples of Ansible inventory files

Goals of these are mostly academic, to demonstrate a syntax, scaling pattern, or issue reproducer. None of these are designed to reflect best practices for using Ansible.

README files are given in many subdirectories.

Top level is mostly organized by file type, with further subdivisions by topic. While this isn't always maintained, an attempt is made.

Using these

Everything is designed to be ran from the CLI from the root of the project root. Aside from one folder for playbook, and other testing scripts, everything is an inventory file that goes in with the -i flag. That means you should see -i <relative path in project>. There are multiple testing commands you can use on any given inventory file.

# run the absolute minimal playbook
ansible-playbook -i top_level_file.ini debugging/hello_world.yml
# print the hostvars for all the hosts
ansible-playbook -i top_level_file.ini debugging/hostvars_print.yml
# dump standard representation of the inventory contents
ansible-inventory -i top_level_file.ini --list --export

Quick and dirty performance profiling

Reference for doing the cProfile stuff

ansible/ansible#13673

pip install pyprof2calltree

python -m cProfile -o outme $(which ansible-playbook) -i <rel_path> debugging/hello_world.yml
pyprof2calltree -i outme
qcachegrind outme.log

Commands from the root of project

Ansible config file example

Inventory plugin path via magic inventory_plugins dir:

ansible-inventory -i plugins/config_path/same_dir/cow.yaml --playbook-dir=plugins/config_path/same_dir --list

Inventory plugin path via child directories:

ansible-inventory -i plugins/config_path/sub_dir/cow.yaml --playbook-dir=plugins/config_path/sub_dir --list

Inventory plugin path via relative directory and using parent directories:

ansible-inventory -i plugins/config_path/inventory_dir/cow.yaml --playbook-dir=plugins/config_path/inventory_dir --list

All of these work testing locally.

Debugging process for the final example:

ansible-inventory -i plugins/config_path/inventory_dir/cow.yaml --playbook-dir=plugins/config_path/other_dir --list
ansible-doc -t inventory -l --playbook-dir=plugins/config_path/inventory_dir