wait_for – Waits for a condition before continuing

Synopsis

  • You can wait for a set amount of time timeout, this is the default if nothing is specified or just timeout is specified. This does not produce an error.

  • Waiting for a port to become available is useful for when services are not immediately available after their init scripts return which is true of certain Java application servers.

  • It is also useful when starting guests with the virt module and needing to pause until they are ready.

  • This module can also be used to wait for a regex match a string to be present in a file.

  • In Ansible 1.6 and later, this module can also be used to wait for a file to be available or absent on the filesystem.

  • In Ansible 1.8 and later, this module can also be used to wait for active connections to be closed before continuing, useful if a node is being rotated out of a load balancer pool.

  • For Windows targets, use the win_wait_for module instead.

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
active_connection_states
list
added in 2.3
 Default:
["ESTABLISHED", "FIN_WAIT1", "FIN_WAIT2", "SYN_RECV", "SYN_SENT", "TIME_WAIT"]
The list of TCP connection states which are counted as active connections.
connect_timeout
integer
Default:
5
Maximum number of seconds to wait for a connection to happen before closing and retrying.
delay
integer
Default:
0
Number of seconds to wait before starting to poll.
exclude_hosts
list
List of hosts or IPs to ignore when looking for active TCP connections for drained state.
host
string
Default:
"127.0.0.1"
A resolvable hostname or IP address to wait for.
msg
string
added in 2.4
This overrides the normal error message from a failure to meet the required conditions.
path
path
Path to a file on the filesystem that must exist before continuing.
path and port are mutually exclusive parameters.
port
integer
Port number to poll.
path and port are mutually exclusive parameters.
search_regex
string
Can be used to match a string in either a file or a socket connection.
Defaults to a multiline regex.
sleep
integer
added in 2.3
 Default:
1
Number of seconds to sleep between checks.
Before Ansible 2.3 this was hardcoded to 1 second.
state
string
    Choices:
  • absent
  • drained
  • present
  • started ←
  • stopped
Either present, started, or stopped, absent, or drained.
When checking a port started will ensure the port is open, stopped will check that it is closed, drained will check for active connections.
When checking for a file or a search string present or started will ensure that the file or string is present before continuing, absent will check that file is absent or removed.
timeout
integer
Default:
300
Maximum number of seconds to wait for, when used with another condition it will force an error.
When used without other conditions it is equivalent of just sleeping.

Notes

Note

  • The ability to use search_regex with a port connection was added in Ansible 1.7.

  • Prior to Ansible 2.4, testing for the absence of a directory or UNIX socket did not work correctly.

  • Prior to Ansible 2.4, testing for the presence of a file did not work correctly if the remote user did not have read access to that file.

  • Under some circumstances when using mandatory access control, a path may always be treated as being absent even if it exists, but can’t be modified or created by the remote user either.

  • When waiting for a path, symbolic links will be followed. Many other modules that manipulate files do not follow symbolic links, so operations on the path using other modules may not work exactly as expected.

See Also

See also

wait_for_connection – Waits until remote system is reachable/usable

The official documentation on the wait_for_connection module.

win_wait_for – Waits for a condition before continuing

The official documentation on the win_wait_for module.

win_wait_for_process – Waits for a process to exist or not exist before continuing

The official documentation on the win_wait_for_process module.

Examples

- name: sleep for 300 seconds and continue with play
  wait_for:
    timeout: 300
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Wait for port 8000 to become open on the host, don't start checking for 10 seconds
  wait_for:
    port: 8000
    delay: 10

- name: Waits for port 8000 of any IP to close active connections, don't start checking for 10 seconds
  wait_for:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 8000
    delay: 10
    state: drained

- name: Wait for port 8000 of any IP to close active connections, ignoring connections for specified hosts
  wait_for:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 8000
    state: drained
    exclude_hosts: 10.2.1.2,10.2.1.3

- name: Wait until the file /tmp/foo is present before continuing
  wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo

- name: Wait until the string "completed" is in the file /tmp/foo before continuing
  wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    search_regex: completed

- name: Wait until regex pattern matches in the file /tmp/foo and print the matched group
  wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    search_regex: completed (?P<task>\w+)
  register: waitfor
- debug:
    msg: Completed {{ waitfor['groupdict']['task'] }}

- name: Wait until the lock file is removed
  wait_for:
    path: /var/lock/file.lock
    state: absent

- name: Wait until the process is finished and pid was destroyed
  wait_for:
    path: /proc/3466/status
    state: absent

- name: Output customized message when failed
  wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    state: present
    msg: Timeout to find file /tmp/foo

# Do not assume the inventory_hostname is resolvable and delay 10 seconds at start
- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
  wait_for:
    port: 22
    host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
    search_regex: OpenSSH
    delay: 10
  connection: local

# Same as above but you normally have ansible_connection set in inventory, which overrides 'connection'
- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
  wait_for:
    port: 22
    host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
    search_regex: OpenSSH
    delay: 10
  vars:
    ansible_connection: local

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key Returned Description
elapsed
integer
 always
The number of seconds that elapsed while waiting

Sample:
23
match_groupdict
dictionary
 always
Dictionary containing all the named subgroups of the match, keyed by the subgroup name, as returned by https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.MatchObject.groupdict

Sample:
{'group': 'match'}
match_groups
list
 always
Tuple containing all the subgroups of the match as returned by https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.MatchObject.groups

Sample:
['match 1', 'match 2']


Status

Red Hat Support

More information about Red Hat’s support of this module is available from this Red Hat Knowledge Base article.

Authors

  • Jeroen Hoekx (@jhoekx)

  • John Jarvis (@jarv)

  • Andrii Radyk (@AnderEnder)

Hint

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