cisco.asa.asa_command – Run arbitrary commands on Cisco ASA devices

Note

This plugin is part of the cisco.asa collection (version 2.1.0).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install cisco.asa.

To use it in a playbook, specify: cisco.asa.asa_command.

New in version 1.0.0: of cisco.asa

Synopsis

  • Sends arbitrary commands to an ASA node and returns the results read from the device. The asa_command module includes an argument that will cause the module to wait for a specific condition before returning or timing out if the condition is not met.

Note

This module has a corresponding action plugin.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

authorize

boolean

Deprecated

Starting with Ansible 2.5 we recommend using connection: network_cli and become: yes.

For more information please see the Network Guide.

Instructs the module to enter privileged mode on the remote device before sending any commands. If not specified, the device will attempt to execute all commands in non-privileged mode. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_AUTHORIZE will be used instead.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

commands

list / elements=string / required

List of commands to send to the remote device over the configured provider. The resulting output from the command is returned. If the wait_for argument is provided, the module is not returned until the condition is satisfied or the number of retires as expired.

context

string

Specifies which context to target if you are running in the ASA in multiple context mode. Defaults to the current context you login to.

interval

integer

Configures the interval in seconds to wait between retries of the command. If the command does not pass the specified conditions, the interval indicates how long to wait before trying the command again.

Default: 1

match

string

The match argument is used in conjunction with the wait_for argument to specify the match policy. Valid values are all or any. If the value is set to all then all conditionals in the wait_for must be satisfied. If the value is set to any then only one of the values must be satisfied.

Choices:

  • any

  • all ← (default)

passwords

boolean

Saves running-config passwords in clear-text when set to True. Defaults to False

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

provider

dictionary

Deprecated

Starting with Ansible 2.5 we recommend using connection: network_cli.

For more information please see the Network Guide.

A dict object containing connection details.

auth_pass

string

Specifies the password to use if required to enter privileged mode on the remote device. If authorize is false, then this argument does nothing. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_AUTH_PASS will be used instead.

authorize

boolean

Instructs the module to enter privileged mode on the remote device before sending any commands. If not specified, the device will attempt to execute all commands in non-privileged mode. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_AUTHORIZE will be used instead.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

host

string

Specifies the DNS host name or address for connecting to the remote device over the specified transport. The value of host is used as the destination address for the transport.

password

string

Specifies the password to use to authenticate the connection to the remote device. This value is used to authenticate the SSH session. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_PASSWORD will be used instead.

port

integer

Specifies the port to use when building the connection to the remote device.

ssh_keyfile

path

Specifies the SSH key to use to authenticate the connection to the remote device. This value is the path to the key used to authenticate the SSH session. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_SSH_KEYFILE will be used instead.

timeout

integer

Specifies idle timeout in seconds for the connection, in seconds. Useful if the console freezes before continuing. For example when saving configurations.

username

string

Configures the username to use to authenticate the connection to the remote device. This value is used to authenticate the SSH session. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable ANSIBLE_NET_USERNAME will be used instead.

retries

integer

Specifies the number of retries a command should by tried before it is considered failed. The command is run on the target device every retry and evaluated against the wait_for conditions.

Default: 10

wait_for

aliases: waitfor

list / elements=string

List of conditions to evaluate against the output of the command. The task will wait for each condition to be true before moving forward. If the conditional is not true within the configured number of retries, the task fails. See examples.

Notes

Note

  • When processing wait_for, each commands’ output is stored as an element of the result array. The allowed operators for conditional evaluation are eq, ==, neq, ne, !=, gt, >, ge, >=, lt, <, le, <=, contains, matches. Operators can be prefaced by not to negate their meaning. The contains operator searches for a substring match (like the Python in operator). The matches operator searches using a regex search operation.

  • For more information on using Ansible to manage network devices see the Ansible Network Guide

Examples

- name: Show the ASA version
  cisco.asa.asa_command:
    commands:
    - show version

- name: Show ASA drops and memory
  cisco.asa.asa_command:
    commands:
    - show asp drop
    - show memory

- name: Send repeat pings and wait for the result to pass 100%
  cisco.asa.asa_command:
    commands:
    - ping 8.8.8.8 repeat 20 size 350
    wait_for:
    - result[0] contains 100
    retries: 2

Return Values

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

Key

Description

failed_conditions

list / elements=string

the conditionals that failed

Returned: failed

Sample: [“…”, “…”]

stdout

list / elements=string

the set of responses from the commands

Returned: always

Sample: [“…”, “…”]

stdout_lines

list / elements=string

The value of stdout split into a list

Returned: always

Sample: [[“…”, “…”], [“…”], [“…”]]

Authors

  • Peter Sprygada (@privateip), Patrick Ogenstad (@ogenstad)