Turns out it is possible to enter a host name directly into the playbook, so running the playbook with hosts: imac-2.local
will work fine. But it's kind of clunky.
A better solution might be defining the playbook's hosts using a variable, then passing in a specific host address via --extra-vars
:
# file: user.yml (playbook)
---
- hosts: '{{ target }}'
user: ...
Running the playbook:
ansible-playbook user.yml --extra-vars "target=imac-2.local"
If {{ target }}
isn't defined, the playbook does nothing. A group from the hosts file can also be passed through if need be. Overall, this seems like a much safer way to construct a potentially destructive playbook.
Playbook targeting a single host:
$ ansible-playbook user.yml --extra-vars "target=imac-2.local" --list-hosts
playbook: user.yml
play #1 (imac-2.local): host count=1
imac-2.local
Playbook with a group of hosts:
$ ansible-playbook user.yml --extra-vars "target=office" --list-hosts
playbook: user.yml
play #1 (office): host count=3
imac-1.local
imac-2.local
imac-3.local
Forgetting to define hosts is safe!
$ ansible-playbook user.yml --list-hosts
playbook: user.yml
play #1 ({{target}}): host count=0
Best Answer
Thanks to tmoschou for adding this comment to an outdated accepted answer:
For more details see this and an explanation
Original answer:
You can use the
copy
module, with the parametercontent=
.I gave the exact same answer here: Write variable to a file in Ansible
In your case, it looks like you want this variable written to a local logfile, so you could combine it with the
local_action
notation: