How to continue execution on failed task after fixing error in playbook?

Question

When writing and debugging Ansible playbooks, typical workflow is as follows:

1. ansible-playbook ./main.yaml
2. Playbook fails on some task
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Answer 1

Take a look at http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_startnstep.html. If you want to start executing your playbook at a particular task, you can do so with the --start-at-task option:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --start-at-task="install packages"

The above will start executing your playbook at a task named “install packages”.

Alternatively, take a look at this previous answer How to run only one task in ansible playbook?

Finally, when a play fails, it usually gives you something along the lines of:

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
           to retry, use: --limit @/home/user/site.retry

Use that --limit command and it should retry from the failed task.