ansible.builtin.pause – Pause playbook execution

Note

This module is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name pause even without specifying the collections: keyword. However, we recommend you use the FQCN for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

New in version 0.8: of ansible.builtin

Synopsis

  • Pauses playbook execution for a set amount of time, or until a prompt is acknowledged. All parameters are optional. The default behavior is to pause with a prompt.

  • To pause/wait/sleep per host, use the ansible.builtin.wait_for module.

  • You can use ctrl+c if you wish to advance a pause earlier than it is set to expire or if you need to abort a playbook run entirely. To continue early press ctrl+c and then c. To abort a playbook press ctrl+c and then a.

  • The pause module integrates into async/parallelized playbooks without any special considerations (see Rolling Updates). When using pauses with the serial playbook parameter (as in rolling updates) you are only prompted once for the current group of hosts.

  • This module is also supported for Windows targets.

Note

This module has a corresponding action plugin.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

echo

boolean

added in 2.5 of ansible.builtin

Controls whether or not keyboard input is shown when typing.

Has no effect if ‘seconds’ or ‘minutes’ is set.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes ← (default)

minutes

string

A positive number of minutes to pause for.

prompt

string

Optional text to use for the prompt message.

seconds

string

A positive number of seconds to pause for.

Notes

Note

  • Starting in 2.2, if you specify 0 or negative for minutes or seconds, it will wait for 1 second, previously it would wait indefinitely.

  • This module is also supported for Windows targets.

  • User input is not captured or echoed, regardless of echo setting, when minutes or seconds is specified.

Examples

- name: Pause for 5 minutes to build app cache
  pause:
    minutes: 5

- name: Pause until you can verify updates to an application were successful
  pause:

- name: A helpful reminder of what to look out for post-update
  pause:
    prompt: "Make sure org.foo.FooOverload exception is not present"

- name: Pause to get some sensitive input
  pause:
    prompt: "Enter a secret"
    echo: no

Return Values

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

Key

Description

delta

string

Time paused in seconds

Returned: always

Sample: 2

echo

boolean

Value of echo setting

Returned: always

Sample: true

start

string

Time when started pausing

Returned: always

Sample: “2017-02-23 14:35:07.298862”

stdout

string

Output of pause module

Returned: always

Sample: “Paused for 0.04 minutes”

stop

string

Time when ended pausing

Returned: always

Sample: “2017-02-23 14:35:09.552594”

user_input

string

User input from interactive console

Returned: if no waiting time set

Sample: “Example user input”

Authors

  • Tim Bielawa (@tbielawa)