Ad Hoc Ansible Commands

Ansible ad hoc commands

Ad hoc commands are ansible tasks you can run against managed hosts without the need of a playbook or script. These are used for bringing nodes to their desired states, verifying playbook results, and verifying nodes meet any needed criteria/pre-requisites.

Here is how you would run an ad hoc ansible command:

ansible {command} {host} -m {module} -a {"argument1 argument2 argument3"}

The results of the command show up on screen. Ansible commands to not show up on the targets bash history.

If you do not specify a module, the command module is specified by default.

indempotent Regardless of current condition, the host is brought to the desired state. Even if you run the command multiple times.

Common options

Read more about the ansible commands here.

The man page for the ansible command:

man ansible

Ad Hoc commands are not a complicated topic. You can use them to gather information from a server or to make changes.