ini – Uses an Ansible INI file as inventory source.

New in version 2.4.

Synopsis

• INI file based inventory, sections are groups or group related with special :modifiers.
• Entries in sections [group_1] are hosts, members of the group.
• Hosts can have variables defined inline as key/value pairs separated by =.
• The children modifier indicates that the section contains groups.
• The vars modifier indicates that the section contains variables assigned to members of the group.
• Anything found outside a section is considered an ‘ungrouped’ host.
• Values passed in using the key=value syntax are interpreted as Python literal structure (strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, None), alternatively as string. For example var=FALSE would create a string equal to ‘FALSE’. Do not rely on types set during definition, always make sure you specify type with a filter when needed when consuming the variable.

Notes

Note

• It takes the place of the previously hardcoded INI inventory.
• To function it requires being whitelisted in configuration.
• Variable values are processed by Python’s ast.literal_eval function (https://docs.python.org/2/library/ast.html#ast.literal_eval) which could cause the value to change in some cases. See the Examples for proper quoting to prevent changes. Another option would be to use the yaml format for inventory source which processes the values correctly.

Examples

example1: |
    # example cfg file
    [web]
    host1
    host2 ansible_port=222

    [web:vars]
    http_port=8080 # all members of 'web' will inherit these
    myvar=23

    [web:children] # child groups will automatically add their hosts to partent group
    apache
    nginx

    [apache]
    tomcat1
    tomcat2 myvar=34 # host specific vars override group vars
    tomcat3 mysecret="'03#pa33w0rd'" # proper quoting to prevent value changes

    [nginx]
    jenkins1

    [nginx:vars]
    has_java = True # vars in child groups override same in parent

    [all:vars]
    has_java = False # 'all' is 'top' parent

example2: |
    # other example config
    host1 # this is 'ungrouped'

    # both hosts have same IP but diff ports, also 'ungrouped'
    host2 ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=44
    host3 ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=45

    [g1]
    host4

    [g2]
    host4 # same host as above, but member of 2 groups, will inherit vars from both
          # inventory hostnames are unique

Status

Authors

• UNKNOWN

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