community.windows.win_wait_for_process module – Waits for a process to exist or not exist before continuing.

Note

This module is part of the community.windows collection (version 1.11.1).

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 community.windows.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.windows.win_wait_for_process.

Synopsis

  • Waiting for a process to start or stop.

  • This is useful when Windows services behave poorly and do not enumerate external dependencies in their manifest.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

owner

string

The owner of the process.

Requires PowerShell version 4.0 or newer.

pid

integer

The PID of the process.

Default: 0

post_wait_delay

integer

Seconds to wait after checking for processes.

Default: 0

pre_wait_delay

integer

Seconds to wait before checking processes.

Default: 0

process_min_count

integer

Minimum number of process matching the supplied pattern to satisfy present condition.

Only applies to present.

Default: 1

process_name_exact

list / elements=string

The name of the process(es) for which to wait. The name of the process(es) should not include the file extension suffix.

process_name_pattern

string

RegEx pattern matching desired process(es).

sleep

integer

Number of seconds to sleep between checks.

Only applies when waiting for a process to start. Waiting for a process to start does not have a native non-polling mechanism. Waiting for a stop uses native PowerShell and does not require polling.

Default: 1

state

string

When checking for a running process present will block execution until the process exists, or until the timeout has been reached. absent will block execution until the process no longer exists, or until the timeout has been reached.

When waiting for present, the module will return changed only if the process was not present on the initial check but became present on subsequent checks.

If, while waiting for absent, new processes matching the supplied pattern are started, these new processes will not be included in the action.

Choices:

  • "absent"

  • "present" ← (default)

timeout

integer

The maximum number of seconds to wait for a for a process to start or stop before erroring out.

Default: 300

See Also

See also

ansible.builtin.wait_for

Waits for a condition before continuing.

ansible.windows.win_wait_for

Waits for a condition before continuing.

Examples

- name: Wait 300 seconds for all Oracle VirtualBox processes to stop. (VBoxHeadless, VirtualBox, VBoxSVC)
  community.windows.win_wait_for_process:
    process_name_pattern: 'v(irtual)?box(headless|svc)?'
    state: absent
    timeout: 500

- name: Wait 300 seconds for 3 instances of cmd to start, waiting 5 seconds between each check
  community.windows.win_wait_for_process:
    process_name_exact: cmd
    state: present
    timeout: 500
    sleep: 5
    process_min_count: 3

Return Values

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

Key

Description

elapsed

float

The elapsed seconds between the start of poll and the end of the module.

Returned: always

Sample: 3.14159265

matched_processes

complex

List of matched processes (either stopped or started).

Returned: always

name

string

The name of the matched process.

Returned: always

Sample: "svchost"

owner

string

The owner of the matched process.

Returned: when supported by PowerShell

Sample: "NT AUTHORITY\\SYSTEM"

pid

integer

The PID of the matched process.

Returned: always

Sample: 7908

Authors

  • Charles Crossan (@crossan007)