Ansible: Can I execute role from command line?

Question

Suppose I have a role called \"apache\"

Now I want to execute that role on host 192.168.0.10 from the command line from Ansible host

ansible-playbook         


        

Answer 1

I am not aware of this feature, but you can use tags to just run one role from your playbook.

roles:
    - {role: 'mysql', tags: 'mysql'}
    - {role: 'apache', tags: 'apache'}

ansible-playbook webserver.yml --tags "apache"

Answer 2

I have written a small Ansible plugin, called auto_tags, that dynamically generates for each role in your playbook a tag of the same name. You can find it here.

After installing it (instructions are in the gist above) you could then execute a specific role with:

ansible-playbook -i "192.168.0.10" --tags "name_of_role"

Answer 3

There is no such thing in Ansible, but if this is an often use case for you, try this script.
Put it somewhere within your searchable PATH under name ansible-role:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $# < 2 ]]; then
  cat <<HELP
Wrapper script for ansible-playbook to apply single role.

Usage: $0 <host-pattern> <role-name> [ansible-playbook options]

Examples:
  $0 dest_host my_role
  $0 custom_host my_role -i 'custom_host,' -vv --check
HELP
  exit
fi

HOST_PATTERN=$1
shift
ROLE=$1
shift

echo "Trying to apply role \"$ROLE\" to host/group \"$HOST_PATTERN\"..."

export ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH="$(pwd)/roles"
export ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED="False"
ansible-playbook "$@" /dev/stdin <<END
---
- hosts: $HOST_PATTERN
  roles:
    - $ROLE
END

Answer 4

You could also check ansible-toolbox repository. It will allow you to use something like

ansible-role --host 192.168.0.10 --gather --user centos --become my-role

Answer 5

With ansible 2.7 you can do this:

$ cd /path/to/ansible/
$ ansible localhost -m include_role -a name=<role_name>
localhost | SUCCESS => {
    "changed": false,
    "include_variables": {
        "name": "<role_name>"
    }
}
localhost | SUCCESS => {
    "msg": "<role_name>"
}

This will run role from /path/to/ansible/roles or configured role path.

Read more here: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/43131

Answer 6

in ansible 2.8 it works slightly different

wohlgemuth@leela:~/workspace/rtmtb-ansible/kvm-cluster$ ansible localhost -m import_role -a name=rtmtb
 [WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available

localhost | CHANGED => {
    "changed": true, 
    "checksum": "d31b41e68997e1c7f182bb56286edf993146dba1", 
    "dest": "/root/.ssh/id_rsa.github", 
    "gid": 0, 
    "group": "root", 
    "md5sum": "b7831c4c72f3f62207b2b96d3d7ed9b3", 
    "mode": "0600", 
    "owner": "root", 
    "size": 3389, 
    "src": "/home/wohlgemuth/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1561491049.46-139127672211209/source", 
    "state": "file", 
    "uid": 0
}
localhost | CHANGED => {
    "changed": true, 
    "checksum": "1972ebcd25363f8e45adc91d38405dfc0386b5f0", 
    "dest": "/root/.ssh/config", 
    "gid": 0, 
    "group": "root", 
    "md5sum": "f82552a9494e40403da4a80e4c528781", 
    "mode": "0644", 
    "owner": "root", 
    "size": 147, 
    "src": "/home/wohlgemuth/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1561491049.99-214274671218454/source", 
    "state": "file", 
    "uid": 0
}