Ansible - read inventory hosts and variables to group_vars/all file

Question

I have a dummy doubt that keeps me stuck for a long time. I have a very banal inventory file with hosts and variables:

[lb]
10.112.84.122

[tomcat]
10.112.84         


        

Answer 1

If you want to programmatically access the inventory entries to include them in a task for example. You can refer to it like this:

{{ hostvars.tomcat }}

This returns you a structure with all variables related with that host. If you want just an IP address (or hostname), you can refer to it like this:

{{ hostvars.jboss5.ansible_ssh_host }}

Here is a list of variables which you can refer to: click. Moreover, you can declare a variable and set it with for example result of some step in a playbook.

- name: Change owner and group of some file
  file: path=/tmp/my-file owner=new-owner group=new-group
  register: chown_result

Then if you play this step on tomcat, you can access it from jboss5 like this:

- name: Print out the result of chown
  debug: msg="{{ hostvars.tomcat.chown_result }}"