Ansible playbook shell output

Question

I would like to quickly monitor some hosts using commands like ps,dstat etc using ansible-playbook. The ansible command itself perfectly does what I want, for i

Answer 1

Perhaps not relevant if you're looking to do this ONLY using ansible. But it's much easier for me to have a function in my .bash_profile and then run _check_machine host1 host2

function _check_machine() {
    echo 'hostname,num_physical_procs,cores_per_procs,memory,Gen,RH Release,bios_hp_power_profile,bios_intel_qpi_link_power_management,bios_hp_power_regulator,bios_idle_power_state,bios_memory_speed,'
    hostlist=$1
    for h in `echo $hostlist | sed 's/ /\n/g'`;
    do
        echo $h | grep -qE '[a-zA-Z]'
        [ $? -ne 0 ] && h=plabb$h
        echo -n $h,
        ssh root@$h 'grep "^physical id" /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u | wc -l; grep "^cpu cores" /proc/cpuinfo |sort -u | awk "{print \$4}"; awk "{print \$2/1024/1024; exit 0}" /proc/meminfo; /usr/sbin/dmidecode | grep "Product Name"; cat /etc/redhat-release; /etc/facter/bios_facts.sh;' | sed 's/Red at Enterprise Linux Server release //g; s/.*=//g; s/\tProduct Name: ProLiant BL460c //g; s/-//g' | sed 's/Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release //g; s/.*=//g; s/\tProduct Name: ProLiant BL460c //g; s/-//g' | tr "\n" ","
         echo ''
    done
}

E.g.

$ _machine_info '10 20 1036'
hostname,num_physical_procs,cores_per_procs,memory,Gen,RH Release,bios_hp_power_profile,bios_intel_qpi_link_power_management,bios_hp_power_regulator,bios_idle_power_state,bios_memory_speed,
plabb10,2,4,47.1629,G6,5.11 (Tikanga),Maximum_Performance,Disabled,HP_Static_High_Performance_Mode,No_CStates,1333MHz_Maximum,
plabb20,2,4,47.1229,G6,6.6 (Santiago),Maximum_Performance,Disabled,HP_Static_High_Performance_Mode,No_CStates,1333MHz_Maximum,
plabb1036,2,12,189.12,Gen8,6.6 (Santiago),Custom,Disabled,HP_Static_High_Performance_Mode,No_CStates,1333MHz_Maximum,
$ 

Needless to say function won't work for you as it is. You need to update it appropriately.

Answer 2

ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=debug ansible-playbook /tmp/foo.yml -vvv

Tasks with STDOUT will then have a section:

STDOUT:

What ever was in STDOUT

Answer 3

I found using the minimal stdout_callback with ansible-playbook gave similar output to using ad-hoc ansible.

In your ansible.cfg (Note that I'm on OS X so modify the callback_plugins path to suit your install)

stdout_callback     = minimal
callback_plugins    = /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/plugins/callback

So that a ansible-playbook task like yours

---
-
  hosts: example
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - shell: ps -eo pcpu,user,args | sort -r -k1 | head -n5

Gives output like this, like an ad-hoc command would

example | SUCCESS | rc=0 >>
%CPU USER     COMMAND
 0.2 root     sshd: root@pts/3
 0.1 root     /usr/sbin/CROND -n
 0.0 root     [xfs-reclaim/vda]
 0.0 root     [xfs_mru_cache]

I'm using ansible-playbook 2.2.1.0

Answer 4

This is a start may be :

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - shell: ps -eo pcpu,user,args | sort -r -k1 | head -n5
      register: ps

    - local_action: command echo item
      with_items: ps.stdout_lines

NOTE: Docs regarding ps.stdout_lines are covered here: ('Register Variables' chapter).

Answer 5

If you need a specific exit status, Ansible provides a way to do that via callback plugins.

Example. It's a very good option if you need a 100% accurate exit status.

If not, you can always use the Debug Module, which is the standard for this cases of use.

Cheers

Answer 6

The debug module could really use some love, but at the moment the best you can do is use this:

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - shell: ps -eo pcpu,user,args | sort -r -k1 | head -n5
      register: ps

    - debug: var=ps.stdout_lines

It gives an output like this:

ok: [host1] => {
    "ps.stdout_lines": [
        "%CPU USER     COMMAND",
        " 1.0 root     /usr/bin/python",
        " 0.6 root     sshd: root@notty ",
        " 0.2 root     java",
        " 0.0 root     sort -r -k1"
    ]
}
ok: [host2] => {
    "ps.stdout_lines": [
        "%CPU USER     COMMAND",
        " 4.0 root     /usr/bin/python",
        " 0.6 root     sshd: root@notty ",
        " 0.1 root     java",
        " 0.0 root     sort -r -k1"
    ]
}