How can I show progress for a long-running Ansible task?

Question

I have a some Ansible tasks that perform unfortunately long operations - things like running an synchronization operation with an S3 folder. It\'s not always clear if they\'re

Answer 1

If you're on Linux you may use systemd-run to create a transient unit and inspect the output with journalctl, like:

sudo systemd-run --unit foo \                                      
     bash -c 'for i in {0..10}; do 
                   echo "$((i * 10))%"; sleep 1;
              done;
              echo "Complete"'

And in another session

sudo journalctl -xf --unit foo

It would output something like:

Apr 07 02:10:34 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started /bin/bash -c for i in {0..10}; do echo "$((i * 10))%"; sleep 1; done; echo "Complete".
-- Subject: Unit foo.service has finished start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit foo.service has finished starting up.
-- 
-- The start-up result is done.
Apr 07 02:10:34 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 0%
Apr 07 02:10:35 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 10%
Apr 07 02:10:36 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 20%
Apr 07 02:10:37 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 30%
Apr 07 02:10:38 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 40%
Apr 07 02:10:39 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 50%
Apr 07 02:10:40 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 60%
Apr 07 02:10:41 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 70%
Apr 07 02:10:42 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 80%
Apr 07 02:10:43 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 90%
Apr 07 02:10:44 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: 100%
Apr 07 02:10:45 localhost.localdomain bash[10083]: Complete