Ansible task output to a file in ansible server

Question

I'm writing a playbook that will check the application version on different hosts and write the output to a Ansible variable.

My requirement is I want to output the ansible variable to a file output.log.

What the problem is the variable is written to the file only for the last host in the hosts inventory, But i want for all the hosts to be appended in the output.log file

Answer 1

Delegate the task to localhost and use lineinfile to add it to your file:

- name: store info
  lineinfile: 
    path: "/tmp/out.log"
    regexp: "\\s{{ inventory_hostname }}$"
    line: "{{ java_version.msg }} {{ inventory_hostname }}"
    create: yes
  delegate_to: localhost

The regexp attribute will make sure that old entries get replaced when you run the playbook again and the version has changed.

Answer 2

Install a facts script to /etc/ansible/facts.d/java.fact on remote hosts and make it executable. Escaping JSON to print on standard out is little ugly. Also ugly, parsing a version "number" out of java -version. Although you might be collecting version in a different way, adjust the script as necessary.

#!/bin/sh
JAVA_VERSION=$(java -version 2>&1  | grep version | cut -d '"' -f 2)
printf "{\"java_version\": \"${JAVA_VERSION}\"}\n"

Write a Jinja template to print the version number lines in the desired format. Say the file is templates/javaversionreport.txt

• groups is a magic dict of inventory_hostname indexed by group
• hostvars is a magic dict with other hosts' variables
• ansible_local is the "local facts" variable
• java is from the java.fact file name

{% for host in groups['hosts'] %}
{{ hostvars[host].ansible_local.java.java_version }} {{ host }}
{% endfor %}

And plays to collect facts and write the report. Adjust the hosts pattern as desired.

---
- hosts: hosts
  gather_facts: True
  fact_path: /etc/ansible/facts.d


- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: False

  tasks:
  - template:
      src: javaversionreport.txt
      dest: /tmp/out.log

One template render runs faster than rewriting files with linefinfile. Although fact gathering can be slow. Also, Jinja templates can be written any format you like.