Ansible playbook doesn't pickup host variables

Question

I am trying to run a playbook which execute against variables stored in the host_vars. This is the solution layout:

/host_vars/f5-test
/inventory/hosts
/playbook.yml

The content of the files are as follows:

/inventory/host:

[f5-test]
localhost

/host_vars/hosts

f5_user:user
f5_password:password
f5_server:server

/playbook.yml

- name: Playbook
  hosts: f5-test
  gather_facts: no
  gather_subset: no

  tasks:
    - name: Taks_01
      tags: "bigip-node"
      bigip_node:
        server: "{{f5_server}}"
        user: "{{f5_user}}"
        password: "{{f5_password}}"
        state: "present"
        partition: "Common"
        host: "10.20.30.40"
        name: "F5_Node"
        session_state: "enabled"
        description: "description"
      delegate_to: localhost

However when we execute the following command:

sudo ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory/hosts -vvvv

I get the following error:

task path: /home/dev/ansible/playbook.yml:9
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {
    "failed": true,
    "msg": "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'f5_server' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/home/dev/ansible/playbook.yml': line 9, column 7, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n  tasks:\n    - name: Task_01\n      ^ here\n"
}

Any idea why it is not being picked up? I set up my project in the same structure found in the F5 ansible example, which can be found here.

Thanks!

Please read your question and fix obvious inconsistencies. It's hard to tell which mistakes you did when writing the question and which when setting up the files. — techraf

Konstantin Suvorov Konstantin Suvorov · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-18T14:02:13

In your example hosts file f5-test is a group, not a host.

So put your variables into a group_vars file: ./group_vars/f5-test.yml:

f5_user: user
f5_password: password
f5_server: server

Ansible playbook doesn't pickup host variables

3 Answers