I would like to shape my directory structure of my ansible roles and playbooks.
Currently I have a directory structure like.
group_vars
* all
* group-one
- group-vars.yml
- group-vault.yml
...
host_vars
- server1.yml
plays
- java_plays
* deploy_fun_java_stuff.yml
* deploy_playbook.yml
roles
- role1
- tasks
* main.yml
- handlers
- (the rest of the needed directories)
- role2
- java
- java_role1
- tasks
* main.yml
- handlers
- (the rest of the needed directories)
I would like to be able to call upon the role java_role1
in the play deploy_fun_java_stuff.yml
I can call
---
- name: deploy fun java stuff
hosts: java
roles:
- { role: role1 }
but I cannot call (I've tried multiple ways). Is this possible?
- name: deploy fun java stuff hosts: java roles: - { role: java/java_role1 }
What I really want to accomplish is to be able to structure my plays in an orderly fashion along with my roles. I will end up with a large number of both roles and plays I would like to organize them.
I can handle this with a separate ansible.cfg file for each play directory but I cannot add those cfg files to ansible tower (So I'm looking for an alternate solution).
I think the problem is that you need to set the relative path properly. Ansible first applies the given path relative to the called playbooks directory, then looks in the current working path (from which you are executing the ansible-playbook
command) and finally checks in /etc/ansible/roles
, so instead of { role: java/java_role1 }
in your dir structure you could use { role: ../../roles/java/java_role1 }
or { role: roles/java/java_role1 }
. Yet another option would be to configure the paths in which ansible is looking for roles. For that you could set the roles_path
inside your projects ansible.cfg
as described in the Ansible docs.
Based on your example:
Dir tree:
ansible/
├── hosts
│ └── dev
├── plays
│ └── java_plays
│ └── java.yml
└── roles
├── java
│ └── java_role1
│ └── tasks
│ └── main.yml
└── role1
└── tasks
└── main.yml
To test it, the play would include java_role1
and role1
.
plays/java_plays/java.yml:
---
- name: deploy java stuff
hosts: java
roles:
- { role: roles/role1 }
- { role: roles/java/java_role1 }
For testing purposes these roles simply print a debug msg.
role1/tasks/main.yml:
---
- debug: msg="Inside role1"
The dev
hosts file simply sets localhost to the java
group. Now I can use the playbook:
fishi@zeus:~/workspace/ansible$ ansible-playbook -i hosts/dev plays/java_plays/java.yml
PLAY [deploy java stuff] *******************************************************
TASK [setup] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [role1 : debug] ***********************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "Inside role1"
}
TASK [java_role1 : debug] *************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "Inside java_role1"
}
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost : ok=3 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0
Now doing the same when you use { role: ../../roles/java/java_role1 }
and { role: ../../roles/role1 }
your log output inside the TASK
brackets would show the whole relative path instead of just the role name:
fishi@zeus:~/workspace/ansible$ ansible-playbook -i hosts/dev plays/java_plays/java.yml
PLAY [deploy java stuff] *******************************************************
TASK [setup] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [../../roles/role1 : debug] ***********************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "Inside role1"
}
TASK [../../roles/java/java_role1 : debug] *************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "Inside java_role1"
}
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost : ok=3 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0
A more elegant solution (imo) is symlinking your roles directory to inside the playbooks directory.
My directory structure is as follows:
inventory/ playbooks/ |-> roles -> ../roles |-> group_vars -> ../group_vars |-> host_vars -> ../host_vars roles/ group_vars/ host_vars/
In my case, I created the symlink by running ln -s ../roles playbooks/roles
Another option and one that I use is to create an ansible.cfg file in your playbook directory and place the following in it:
[defaults]
roles_path = /etc/ansible/roles: :
or in your case:
[defaults]
roles_path = /etc/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles/java
Then don't use any relative paths.
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