User Guide

Welcome to the Ansible User Guide!

This guide covers how to work with Ansible, including using the command line, working with inventory, and writing playbooks.

• Ansible Quickstart
• Getting Started
  • Foreword
  • Remote Connection Information
  • Your first commands
  • Host Key Checking
• Working with Command Line Tools
  • ansible
  • ansible-config
  • ansible-console
  • ansible-doc
  • ansible-galaxy
  • ansible-inventory
  • ansible-playbook
  • ansible-pull
  • ansible-vault
• Introduction To Ad-Hoc Commands
  • Parallelism and Shell Commands
  • File Transfer
  • Managing Packages
  • Users and Groups
  • Deploying From Source Control
  • Managing Services
  • Time Limited Background Operations
  • Gathering Facts
• Working with Inventory
  • Hosts and Groups
  • Host Variables
  • Group Variables
  • Groups of Groups, and Group Variables
  • Default groups
  • Splitting Out Host and Group Specific Data
  • How Variables Are Merged
  • List of Behavioral Inventory Parameters
  • Non-SSH connection types
• Working With Dynamic Inventory
  • Example: The Cobbler External Inventory Script
  • Example: AWS EC2 External Inventory Script
  • Example: OpenStack External Inventory Script
  • Other inventory scripts
  • Using Inventory Directories and Multiple Inventory Sources
  • Static Groups of Dynamic Groups
• Working With Playbooks
  • Intro to Playbooks
  • Creating Reusable Playbooks
  • Variables
  • Templating (Jinja2)
  • Conditionals
  • Loops
  • Blocks
  • Advanced Playbooks Features
  • Strategies
  • Best Practices
• Understanding Privilege Escalation
  • Become
  • Directives
  • Become and Networks
  • Become and Windows
• Ansible Vault
  • What Can Be Encrypted With Vault
  • Creating Encrypted Files
  • Editing Encrypted Files
  • Rekeying Encrypted Files
  • Encrypting Unencrypted Files
  • Decrypting Encrypted Files
  • Viewing Encrypted Files
  • Use encrypt_string to create encrypted variables to embed in yaml
  • Vault Ids and Multiple Vault Passwords
  • Providing Vault Passwords
  • Speeding Up Vault Operations
  • Vault Format
  • Vault Payload Format 1.1
• Working with Patterns
• Working With Modules
  • Introduction
  • Return Values
  • Module Maintenance & Support
  • Module Index
• Working With Plugins
  • Action Plugins
  • Cache Plugins
  • Callback Plugins
  • Connection Plugins
  • Inventory Plugins
  • Lookup Plugins
  • Shell Plugins
  • Strategy Plugins
  • Vars Plugins
  • Filters
  • Tests
  • Plugin Filter Configuration
• BSD Support
  • Working with BSD
  • Bootstrapping BSD
  • Setting the Python interpreter
  • Which modules are available?
  • Using BSD as the control machine
  • BSD Facts
  • BSD Efforts and Contributions
• Windows Guides
  • Setting up a Windows Host
  • Windows Remote Management
  • Using Ansible and Windows
  • Desired State Configuration
  • Windows Frequently Asked Questions