Ansible pause Module: Wait for Input, Delay & Prompt Users (Complete Guide) — Video Tutorial

How to pause a playbook execution for a certain amount of time with Ansible? I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot Ansible pause execution Today we're talking about the Ansible module `pause`. This module is also supported for Windows targets. The full name is `ansible.builtin.pause`, which means that is part of the collection of modules "builtin" with Ansible and shipped with it. The default behavior is to pause with a prompt. Pauses playbook execution for a set amount of time, or until a prompt is acknowledged. Parameters - `minutes` string - a positive number of minutes - `seconds` string - a positive number of seconds - `prompt` string - "Text message" - `echo` boolean - yes/no All parameters are optional. The default behavior is to pause with a prompt. You could specify the amount of time using the parameters "`minutes`" and "`seconds`". Starting in Ansible 2.2, if you specify 0 or negative for minutes or seconds, it will wait for 1 second, previously it would wait indefinitely. When minutes or seconds are specified, user input is not captured or echoed, regardless of the echo setting. I'll cover the user input in another video. ## Playbook Let's jump in a real-life Ansible Playbook to pause a playbook execution. code - pause.yml ```yaml --- - name: pause module Playbook hosts: all vars: wait_seconds: 10 tasks: - name: pause for {{ wait_seconds | int }} second(s) ansible.builtin.pause: seconds: "{{ wait_seconds | int }}" - name: message ansible.builtin.debug: msg: "The end" ``` output ```bash $ ansible-playbook -i Playbook/inventory pause/pause.yml PLAY [pause module Playbook] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [pause for 10 second(s)] ********************************************************************* Pausing for 10 seconds (ctrl+C then 'C' = continue early, ctrl+C then 'A' = abort) ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [message] ************************************************************************************ ok: [demo.example.com] => { "msg": "The end" } PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=3 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ``` output with manual continue (CTRL+C and "C") ```bash $ ansible-playbook -i Playbook/inventory pause/pause.yml PLAY [pause module Playbook] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [pause for 10 second(s)] ********************************************************************* Pausing for 10 seconds (ctrl+