Check if service exists with Ansible

Question

I have an Ansible playbook for deploying a Java app as an init.d daemon.

Being a beginner in both Ansible and Linux I\'m having trouble to conditionally execute task

Answer 1

It would be nice if the "service" module could handle "unrecognized service" errors.

This is my approach, using the service command instead of checking for an init script:

- name: check for apache
  shell: "service apache2 status"
  register: _svc_apache
  failed_when: >
    _svc_apache.rc != 0 and ("unrecognized service" not in _svc_apache.stderr)

- name: disable apache
  service: name=apache2 state=stopped enabled=no
  when: "_svc_apache.rc == 0"

• check the exit code of "service status" and accept the exit code 0 when the output contains "unrecognized service"
• if the exit code was 0, that service is installed (stopped or running)