Ansible task includes undefined var, despite being defined in defaults/main.yml

Question

I am trying to create a Galaxy role for our org's internal galaxy, which I am testing first locally. In our org we use a common list of defaults across all roles.

Ansible is throwing me a "The task includes an option with an undefined variable The error was: 'redis_download_url' is undefined" error when running my playbook, despite me having defined the variable in defaults/main.yml:

# Download
redis_version: "6.2.3"
redis_download_url: "https://download.redis.io/releases/redis-{{ redis_version }}.tar.gz"

When running my simple role/playbook.yml

---
- hosts: all
  become: true
  tasks:
    - include: tasks/main.yml

Linked to tasks/main.yml

---
- name: Check ansible version
  assert:
    that: "ansible_version.full is version_compare('2.4', '>=')"
    msg: "Please use Ansible 2.4 or later"

- include: download.yml
  tags:
    - download

- include: install.yml
  tags:
    - install

It should pull the tar file from tasks/download.yml as stated:

---
- name: Download Redis
  get_url:
    url: "{{ redis_download_url }}"
    dest: /usr/local/src/redis-{{ redis_version }}.tar.gz

- name: Extract Redis tarball
  unarchive:
    src: /usr/local/src/redis-{{ redis_version }}.tar.gz
    dest: /usr/local/src
    creates: /usr/local/src/redis-{{ redis_version }}/Makefile
    copy: no

The redis_download_url var is defined in defaults/main.yml which as I understand ansible should be able to locate there. I also have similar vars defined in defaults/task.yml eg.

redis_user: redis
redis_group: "{{ redis_user }}"
redis_port: "6379"
redis_root_dir: "/opt/redis"
redis_config_dir: "/etc/redis"
redis_conf_file: "{{ redis_config_dir }}/{{ redis_port }}.conf"
redis_password: "change-me"
redis_protected_mode: "yes"

and I assume they are also not able to be found/seen by ansible (but it does not get that far). I have also checked all file permissions and they seem to be fine.

Apologies in advance if the question is badly formatted.

If you wanted to use roles in playbook, why not use include_role or roles: ["rolename"]? — seshadri_c
You are including a task file from a path which happens to be located in a role but ansible does not really care about this latest assertion. If you want to execute the role, either add it to the roles section in your play or use (include|import)_role. docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/… — Zeitounator

seshadri_c seshadri_c · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-09T12:12:34

As per documentation:

If you include a task file from a role, it will NOT trigger role behavior, this only happens when running as a role, include_role will work.

To get the role functionality of reading variables from defaults/main.yml, you'll need to use include_role or roles: [].

- hosts: all
  become: true

  tasks:
    - include_role:
        name: myrole

OR

- hosts: all
  become: true

  roles:
    - myrole

Ansible task includes undefined var, despite being defined in defaults/main.yml

1 Answers