Tags

If you have a large playbook it may become useful to be able to run a specific part of the configuration without running the whole playbook.

Both plays and tasks support a “tags:” attribute for this reason. You can ONLY filter tasks based on tags from the command line with --tags or --skip-tags. Adding “tags:” in any part of a play (including roles) adds those tags to the contained tasks.

Example:

tasks:

    - yum: name={{ item }} state=installed
      with_items:
         - httpd
         - memcached
      tags:
         - packages

    - template: src=templates/src.j2 dest=/etc/foo.conf
      tags:
         - configuration

If you wanted to just run the “configuration” and “packages” part of a very long playbook, you could do this:

ansible-playbook example.yml --tags "configuration,packages"

On the other hand, if you want to run a playbook without certain tasks, you could do this:

ansible-playbook example.yml --skip-tags "notification"

Tag Reuse

You can apply the same tag name to more than one task, in the same file or included files. This will run all tasks with that tag.

Example:

---
# file: roles/common/tasks/main.yml

- name: be sure ntp is installed
  yum: name=ntp state=installed
  tags: ntp

- name: be sure ntp is configured
  template: src=ntp.conf.j2 dest=/etc/ntp.conf
  notify:
    - restart ntpd
  tags: ntp

- name: be sure ntpd is running and enabled
  service: name=ntpd state=started enabled=yes
  tags: ntp

Tag Inheritance

You can apply tags to more than tasks, but they ONLY affect the tasks themselves. Applying tags anywhere else is just a convenience so you don’t have to write it on every task:

- hosts: all
  tags:
    - bar
  tasks:
    ...

- hosts: all
  tags: ['foo']
  tasks:
    ...

You may also apply tags to roles:

roles:
  - { role: webserver, port: 5000, tags: [ 'web', 'foo' ] }

And import/include statements:

- import_tasks: foo.yml
  tags: [web,foo]

or:

- include_tasks: foo.yml
  tags: [web,foo]

All of these apply the specified tags to EACH task inside the play, included file, or role, so that these tasks can be selectively run when the playbook is invoked with the corresponding tags.

Tags are inherited down the dependency chain. In order for tags to be applied to a role and all its dependencies, the tag should be applied to the role, not to all the tasks within a role.

You can see which tags are applied to tasks by running ansible-playbook with the --list-tasks option. You can display all tags using the --list-tags option.

Special Tags

There is a special always tag that will always run a task, unless specifically skipped (--skip-tags always)

Example:

tasks:

    - debug: msg="Always runs"
      tags:
        - always

    - debug: msg="runs when you use tag1"
      tags:
        - tag1

There are another 3 special keywords for tags, tagged, untagged and all, which run only tagged, only untagged and all tasks respectively.

By default ansible runs as if --tags all had been specified.