Ansible Tags: Run Only Specific Tasks in a Playbook (Guide)

By Luca Berton · Published 2024-01-01 · Category: troubleshooting

How to run only one task or specific tasks in an Ansible playbook using tags. Use --tags, --skip-tags, always/never tags.

Ansible Tags: Run Only Specific Tasks in a Playbook (Guide)

How to run only one task in an Ansible Playbook?

How use tags statement in Ansible Playbook?

--tags all
--tags tag1
--tags [tag1, tag2]
--skip-tags [tag3, tag4]
--tags tagged
--tags untagged

Today we're talking about Ansible tags statement. When your Ansible Playbook starts to grow up it's useful to define tags to allow a more granular execution. You could define one or multiple tags at the individual task, include, import, play, block, role level. Tags also could have tag inheritance properties. The easiest way to run only one task in Ansible Playbook is using the tags statement parameter of the "ansible-playbook" command. The default behavior is to execute all the tags in your Playbook with --tags all. You could specify to execute a single tag with --tags tag1 or a list of tags --tags [tag1, tag2] You could specify also and use the negate logic to exclude some tags--skip-tags [tag3, tag4]. Another convenient way is to execute only the code with tag --tags tagged or without --tags untagged.

Links

Tags

## Playbook How to run only one task in Ansible Playbook?

code

---
- name: tags Playbook
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: example 1
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "example 1"
      tags: tag1
    - name: example 2
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "example 2"
      tags: tag2

execution default

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory variables/tags.yml
PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
TASK [example 1] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 1"
}
TASK [example 2] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 2"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

execution tags tag1

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory --tags=tag1 variables/tags.yml
PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
TASK [example 1] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 1"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

execution tags tag2

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory --tags=tag2 variables/tags.yml

PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
TASK [example 2] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 2"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

execution tags tagged

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory --tags tagged variables/tags.yml
PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
TASK [example 1] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 1"
}
TASK [example 2] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 2"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
execution tags untagged
$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory --tags untagged variables/tags.yml

PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
execution tags all
$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory --tags all variables/tags.yml
PLAY [tags Playbook] **********************************************************************************
TASK [example 1] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 1"
}
TASK [example 2] **********************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com] => {
    "msg": "example 2"
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Conclusion

Now you know how to run only one task in Ansible Playbook from the command line.

Category: troubleshooting

Watch the video: Ansible Tags: Run Only Specific Tasks in a Playbook (Guide) — Video Tutorial

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