Ansible ‘ERROR! Missing target hosts’

ansible

I'm trying to get some very basic things working with Ansible 2.1.1.0 on OS X.

My targets are all Ubuntu 16.04, so the very first thing I have to do is get it to install python2.7, as without that even 'ping' won't work.

I have an inventory set up like this in servers:

[dbservers]
192.168.x.x set_hostname=db

[webservers]

[servers:children]
dbservers
webservers

And this is my play in init.yml:

---
- hosts: servers
  gather_facts: False
  become: yes
  tasks:
     - name: apt-get update
       raw: /usr/bin/apt-get update -qq
     - name: Install python 2.7
       raw: test -e /usr/bin/python || /usr/bin/apt-get install -q -y python2.7 python-simplejson

I check that it's selecting the right hosts by specifying the dbservers group, which is a subset of servers (there is only 1 anyway), which looks right to me:

# ansible dbservers -i servers --list-hosts
  hosts (1):
    192.168.x.x

The command I'm running is this:

# ansible dbservers -i servers init.yml

and that's when I get the error ERROR! Missing target hosts. I don't understand how it can have hosts and no hosts at the same time! What am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

You are trying to run a playbook with the ansible command. The ansible command is for add-hoc commands.

Try executing your playbook with ansible-playbook command:

ansible-playbook -i servers init.yml
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