How to set remote environment per Ansible task or play?

I’m going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Set remote environment per Ansible task or play

  • environment statement

You could set the remote environment with the Ansible statement environment. The environment statement could be applied at the task level or play level. It’s very useful to set for example proxy in a corporate environment.

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Playbook

Set environment per Ansible Playbook task or play level.

code

---
- name: remote environment Playbook
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  environment:
    EXAMPLE: test1
tasks:
    - name: diplay EXAMPLE
      ansible.builtin.command: "echo $EXAMPLE"
    - name: diplay EXAMPLE
      ansible.builtin.command: "echo $EXAMPLE"
      environment:
        EXAMPLE: test2

execution

You need to run the playbook with the verbose option (-v) in order to see the standard output on the console.

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory ansible\ statements/environment-remote.yml
PLAY [remote environment Playbook] ********************************************************************
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com]
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=2    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory ansible\ statements/environment-remote.yml -v
No config file found; using defaults
PLAY [remote environment Playbook] ********************************************************************
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com] => {"ansible_facts": {"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/libexec/platform-python"}, "changed": true, "cmd": ["echo", "$EXAMPLE"], "delta": "0:00:00.002864", "end": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.059864", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "start": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.057000", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "test1", "stdout_lines": ["test1"]}
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com] => {"changed": true, "cmd": ["echo", "$EXAMPLE"], "delta": "0:00:00.002800", "end": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.416884", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "start": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.414084", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "test2", "stdout_lines": ["test2"]}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=2    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

idempotency

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory ansible\ statements/environment-remote.yml -v
No config file found; using defaults
PLAY [remote environment Playbook] ********************************************************************
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com] => {"ansible_facts": {"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/libexec/platform-python"}, "changed": true, "cmd": ["echo", "$EXAMPLE"], "delta": "0:00:00.002864", "end": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.059864", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "start": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.057000", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "test1", "stdout_lines": ["test1"]}
TASK [diplay EXAMPLE] *****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com] => {"changed": true, "cmd": ["echo", "$EXAMPLE"], "delta": "0:00:00.002800", "end": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.416884", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "start": "2022-02-21 09:05:33.414084", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "test2", "stdout_lines": ["test2"]}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=2    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

before execution

ansible-pilot $ ssh [email protected]
Last login: Fri Feb 18 16:07:48 2022 from 192.168.0.59
[devops@demo ~]$ echo $EXAMPLE
[devops@demo ~]$

after execution

ansible-pilot $ ssh [email protected]
Last login: Mon Feb 21 07:05:33 2022 from 192.168.251.111
[devops@demo ~]$ echo $EXAMPLE

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Conclusion

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