ansible.builtin.systemd module – Manage systemd units

Note

This module is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name systemd 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 2.2: of ansible.builtin

Synopsis

  • Controls systemd units (services, timers, and so on) on remote hosts.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

  • A system managed by systemd.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

daemon_reexec

aliases: daemon-reexec

boolean

added in 2.8 of ansible.builtin

Run daemon_reexec command before doing any other operations, the systemd manager will serialize the manager state.

Choices:

  • no ← (default)

  • yes

daemon_reload

aliases: daemon-reload

boolean

Run daemon-reload before doing any other operations, to make sure systemd has read any changes.

When set to true, runs daemon-reload even if the module does not start or stop anything.

Choices:

  • no ← (default)

  • yes

enabled

boolean

Whether the unit should start on boot. At least one of state and enabled are required.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

force

boolean

added in 2.6 of ansible.builtin

Whether to override existing symlinks.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

masked

boolean

Whether the unit should be masked or not, a masked unit is impossible to start.

Choices:

  • no

  • yes

name

aliases: service, unit

string

Name of the unit. This parameter takes the name of exactly one unit to work with.

When no extension is given, it is implied to a .service as systemd.

When using in a chroot environment you always need to specify the name of the unit with the extension. For example, crond.service.

no_block

boolean

added in 2.3 of ansible.builtin

Do not synchronously wait for the requested operation to finish. Enqueued job will continue without Ansible blocking on its completion.

Choices:

  • no ← (default)

  • yes

scope

string

added in 2.7 of ansible.builtin

Run systemctl within a given service manager scope, either as the default system scope system, the current user’s scope user, or the scope of all users global.

For systemd to work with ‘user’, the executing user must have its own instance of dbus started and accessible (systemd requirement).

The user dbus process is normally started during normal login, but not during the run of Ansible tasks. Otherwise you will probably get a ‘Failed to connect to bus: no such file or directory’ error.

The user must have access, normally given via setting the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable, see example below.

Choices:

  • system ← (default)

  • user

  • global

state

string

started/stopped are idempotent actions that will not run commands unless necessary. restarted will always bounce the unit. reloaded will always reload.

Choices:

  • reloaded

  • restarted

  • started

  • stopped

Attributes

Attribute

Support

Description

check_mode

Support: full

Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction withought modifying target

diff_mode

Support: none

Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode

platform

Platform: posix

Target OS/families that can be operated against

Notes

Note

  • Since 2.4, one of the following options is required state, enabled, masked, daemon_reload, (daemon_reexec since 2.8), and all except daemon_reload and (daemon_reexec since 2.8) also require name.

  • Before 2.4 you always required name.

  • Globs are not supported in name, i.e postgres*.service.

  • The service names might vary by specific OS/distribution

Examples

- name: Make sure a service unit is running
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    state: started
    name: httpd

- name: Stop service cron on debian, if running
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: cron
    state: stopped

- name: Restart service cron on centos, in all cases, also issue daemon-reload to pick up config changes
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    state: restarted
    daemon_reload: yes
    name: crond

- name: Reload service httpd, in all cases
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: httpd.service
    state: reloaded

- name: Enable service httpd and ensure it is not masked
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: httpd
    enabled: yes
    masked: no

- name: Enable a timer unit for dnf-automatic
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: dnf-automatic.timer
    state: started
    enabled: yes

- name: Just force systemd to reread configs (2.4 and above)
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    daemon_reload: yes

- name: Just force systemd to re-execute itself (2.8 and above)
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    daemon_reexec: yes

- name: Run a user service when XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set on remote login
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: myservice
    state: started
    scope: user
  environment:
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR: "/run/user/{{ myuid }}"

Return Values

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

Key

Description

status

complex

A dictionary with the key=value pairs returned from systemctl show.

Returned: success

Sample: {“ActiveEnterTimestamp”: “Sun 2016-05-15 18:28:49 EDT”, “ActiveEnterTimestampMonotonic”: “8135942”, “ActiveExitTimestampMonotonic”: “0”, “ActiveState”: “active”, “After”: “auditd.service systemd-user-sessions.service time-sync.target systemd-journald.socket basic.target system.slice”, “AllowIsolate”: “no”, “Before”: “shutdown.target multi-user.target”, “BlockIOAccounting”: “no”, “BlockIOWeight”: “1000”, “CPUAccounting”: “no”, “CPUSchedulingPolicy”: “0”, “CPUSchedulingPriority”: “0”, “CPUSchedulingResetOnFork”: “no”, “CPUShares”: “1024”, “CanIsolate”: “no”, “CanReload”: “yes”, “CanStart”: “yes”, “CanStop”: “yes”, “CapabilityBoundingSet”: “18446744073709551615”, “ConditionResult”: “yes”, “ConditionTimestamp”: “Sun 2016-05-15 18:28:49 EDT”, “ConditionTimestampMonotonic”: “7902742”, “Conflicts”: “shutdown.target”, “ControlGroup”: “/system.slice/crond.service”, “ControlPID”: “0”, “DefaultDependencies”: “yes”, “Delegate”: “no”, “Description”: “Command Scheduler”, “DevicePolicy”: “auto”, “EnvironmentFile”: “/etc/sysconfig/crond (ignore_errors=no)”, “ExecMainCode”: “0”, “ExecMainExitTimestampMonotonic”: “0”, “ExecMainPID”: “595”, “ExecMainStartTimestamp”: “Sun 2016-05-15 18:28:49 EDT”, “ExecMainStartTimestampMonotonic”: “8134990”, “ExecMainStatus”: “0”, “ExecReload”: “{ path=/bin/kill ; argv[]=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID ; ignore_errors=no ; start_time=[n/a] ; stop_time=[n/a] ; pid=0 ; code=(null) ; status=0/0 }”, “ExecStart”: “{ path=/usr/sbin/crond ; argv[]=/usr/sbin/crond -n $CRONDARGS ; ignore_errors=no ; start_time=[n/a] ; stop_time=[n/a] ; pid=0 ; code=(null) ; status=0/0 }”, “FragmentPath”: “/usr/lib/systemd/system/crond.service”, “GuessMainPID”: “yes”, “IOScheduling”: “0”, “Id”: “crond.service”, “IgnoreOnIsolate”: “no”, “IgnoreOnSnapshot”: “no”, “IgnoreSIGPIPE”: “yes”, “InactiveEnterTimestampMonotonic”: “0”, “InactiveExitTimestamp”: “Sun 2016-05-15 18:28:49 EDT”, “InactiveExitTimestampMonotonic”: “8135942”, “JobTimeoutUSec”: “0”, “KillMode”: “process”, “KillSignal”: “15”, “LimitAS”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitCORE”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitCPU”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitDATA”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitFSIZE”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitLOCKS”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitMEMLOCK”: “65536”, “LimitMSGQUEUE”: “819200”, “LimitNICE”: “0”, “LimitNOFILE”: “4096”, “LimitNPROC”: “3902”, “LimitRSS”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitRTPRIO”: “0”, “LimitRTTIME”: “18446744073709551615”, “LimitSIGPENDING”: “3902”, “LimitSTACK”: “18446744073709551615”, “LoadState”: “loaded”, “MainPID”: “595”, “MemoryAccounting”: “no”, “MemoryLimit”: “18446744073709551615”, “MountFlags”: “0”, “Names”: “crond.service”, “NeedDaemonReload”: “no”, “Nice”: “0”, “NoNewPrivileges”: “no”, “NonBlocking”: “no”, “NotifyAccess”: “none”, “OOMScoreAdjust”: “0”, “OnFailureIsolate”: “no”, “PermissionsStartOnly”: “no”, “PrivateNetwork”: “no”, “PrivateTmp”: “no”, “RefuseManualStart”: “no”, “RefuseManualStop”: “no”, “RemainAfterExit”: “no”, “Requires”: “basic.target”, “Restart”: “no”, “RestartUSec”: “100ms”, “Result”: “success”, “RootDirectoryStartOnly”: “no”, “SameProcessGroup”: “no”, “SecureBits”: “0”, “SendSIGHUP”: “no”, “SendSIGKILL”: “yes”, “Slice”: “system.slice”, “StandardError”: “inherit”, “StandardInput”: “null”, “StandardOutput”: “journal”, “StartLimitAction”: “none”, “StartLimitBurst”: “5”, “StartLimitInterval”: “10000000”, “StatusErrno”: “0”, “StopWhenUnneeded”: “no”, “SubState”: “running”, “SyslogLevelPrefix”: “yes”, “SyslogPriority”: “30”, “TTYReset”: “no”, “TTYVHangup”: “no”, “TTYVTDisallocate”: “no”, “TimeoutStartUSec”: “1min 30s”, “TimeoutStopUSec”: “1min 30s”, “TimerSlackNSec”: “50000”, “Transient”: “no”, “Type”: “simple”, “UMask”: “0022”, “UnitFileState”: “enabled”, “WantedBy”: “multi-user.target”, “Wants”: “system.slice”, “WatchdogTimestampMonotonic”: “0”, “WatchdogUSec”: “0”}

Authors

  • Ansible Core Team