Getting value undefined error in ansible

Question

I am having this playbook

---
- hosts: all
  handlers:
  - name: user-create
    user: name=oracle state=present
  tasks:
  - name: "check user"
    command: /usr/bin/id oracle
    register: output
    notify: user-create
    when: output.rc == 1

But whenever i run this on a system where oracle user is not there, running into this error

"failed": true, "msg": "The conditional check 'output.rc == 1' failed. The error was: error while evaluating conditional (output.rc == 1): 'output' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/user-check.yml': line 10, column 5, 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: \"check user\"\n ^ here\n"

when statement is evaluated before task execution, and output variable is populated after task execution. What is your goal? — Konstantin Suvorov
Hello Konstantin, My goal is to check if oracle user exists, thene delete it and recreate the user. Thats why i am registering the output and then if the rc is 1, notifying the handler.Ps guide me on how to achieve the same — achak01
Your requirement is not idempotent, it will delete/create user every playbook run. This is bad pattern. Take a look at @techraf's answer. Just add task with state=absent if you want to always recreate user. — Konstantin Suvorov

techraf techraf · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-12T07:59:48

Answering based on comment:

Actually i wanto check if the user exists, id it exists delete and recreate the user

The correct way to do it in Ansible is:

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: ensure user 'oracle' does not exist
      user: name=oracle state=absent

    - name: ensure user 'oracle' exists
      user: name=oracle state=present

And that's all.

Ansible takes care not to try to create a user if it already exists; and not to try to delete a user if it doesn't.

Getting value undefined error in ansible

1 Answers