Introduction
Today we’re going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting, specifically about the undefined variable errors. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.
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Playbook
The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump in a live Playbook to show you practically the undefined variable error and how to solve it!
error code
- underfinedvariable_error.yml
---
- name: debug module Playbook
hosts: all
tasks:
- name: debug message
ansible.builtin.debug:
msg: "{{ fruit }}"
error execution
$ ansible-playbook troubleshooting/undefinedvariable_error.yml
PLAY [file module demo] ***************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]
TASK [debug message] ******************************************************************************
fatal: [demo.example.com]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'fruit' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to be in '/Users/lberton/prj/github/ansible-pilot/troubleshooting/undefinedvariable_error.yml': line 5, 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: debug message\n ^ here\n"}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
fix code
- underfinedvariable_fix.yml
---
- name: debug module Playbook
hosts: all
vars:
fruit: "apple"
tasks:
- name: debug message
ansible.builtin.debug:
msg: "{{ fruit }}"
fix execution
$ ansible-playbook troubleshooting/undefinedvariable_fix.yml
PLAY [debug module Playbook] **************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]
TASK [debug message] ******************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
"msg": "apple"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
Conclusion
Now you know how to troubleshoot the most common Ansible undefined variable error. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.
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