Running your first ansible tasks

Creating a file

This task will create a file called note.txt in the /tmp directory on your localhost.

create-file.yml

- name: "First Play"
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: "First task"
      command: touch /tmp/note.txt

The playbook will be run with the following command:

ansible-playbook create-file.yml

This task uses the command module to run the touch command on the local host.

Copying a file to a remote system

This task will copy the file from before to /tmp/note2.txt.

copy-file.yml

- name: "Second Play"
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: "Second task"
      copy: 
        src: /tmp/note.txt
        dest: /tmp/note2.txt

The playbook will be run with the following command:

ansible-playbook copy-file.yml

This task uses the builtin copy module.

Analysing the output

The output of the second playbook will look something like this:

PLAY [Second task] **************************************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Second task] **************************************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=1    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

If we run the second playbook again, the output will look like this:

PLAY [Second task] **************************************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Second task] **************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

The second run shows status ok, because the copy module is idempotent. Because the file was already copied, the module did not change anything. More details about the playbook recap will follow in the next chapters.