cisco.ios.ios_command – Run commands on remote devices running Cisco IOS

Note

This plugin is part of the cisco.ios collection (version 2.6.0).

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.ios.

To use it in a playbook, specify: cisco.ios.ios_command.

New in version 1.0.0: of cisco.ios

Synopsis

  • Sends arbitrary commands to an ios node and returns the results read from the device. This 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.

  • This module does not support running commands in configuration mode. Please use ios_config to configure IOS devices.

Note

This module has a corresponding action plugin.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

commands

list / elements=raw / required

List of commands to send to the remote ios 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 retries has expired. If a command sent to the device requires answering a prompt, it is possible to pass a dict containing command, answer and prompt. Common answers are ‘y’ or “r” (carriage return, must be double quotes). See examples.

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)

provider

dictionary

Deprecated

Starting with Ansible 2.5 we recommend using connection: network_cli.

For more information please see the https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/network/user_guide/platform_ios.html.

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 ← (default)

  • 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 the timeout in seconds for communicating with the network device for either connecting or sending commands. If the timeout is exceeded before the operation is completed, the module will error.

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

Examples

- name: run show version on remote devices
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands: show version

- name: run show version and check to see if output contains IOS
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands: show version
    wait_for: result[0] contains IOS

- name: run multiple commands on remote nodes
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands:
    - show version
    - show interfaces

- name: run multiple commands and evaluate the output
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands:
    - show version
    - show interfaces
    wait_for:
    - result[0] contains IOS
    - result[1] contains Loopback0

- name: run commands that require answering a prompt
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands:
    - command: 'clear counters GigabitEthernet0/1'
      prompt: 'Clear "show interface" counters on this interface \[confirm\]'
      answer: 'y'
    - command: 'clear counters GigabitEthernet0/2'
      prompt: '[confirm]'
      answer: "\r"

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 list of conditionals that have failed

Returned: failed

Sample: [“…”, “…”]

stdout

list / elements=string

The set of responses from the commands

Returned: always apart from low level errors (such as action plugin)

Sample: [“…”, “…”]

stdout_lines

list / elements=string

The value of stdout split into a list

Returned: always apart from low level errors (such as action plugin)

Sample: [[“…”, “…”], [“…”], [“…”]]

Authors

  • Peter Sprygada (@privateip)