Ansible supports several sources for configuring its behavior, including an ini file named ansible.cfg, environment variables, command-line options, playbook keywords, and variables. See Controlling how Ansible behaves: precedence rules for details on the relative precedence of each source.

The ansible-config utility allows users to see all the configuration settings available, their defaults, how to set them and where their current value comes from. See ansible-config for more information.

The configuration file

Changes can be made and used in a configuration file which will be searched for in the following order:

• ANSIBLE_CONFIG (environment variable if set)
• ansible.cfg (in the current directory)
• ~/.ansible.cfg (in the home directory)
• /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

Ansible will process the above list and use the first file found, all others are ignored.

Note

The configuration file is one variant of an INI format. Both the hash sign (#) and semicolon (;) are allowed as comment markers when the comment starts the line. However, if the comment is inline with regular values, only the semicolon is allowed to introduce the comment. For instance:

# some basic default values...
inventory = /etc/ansible/hosts  ; This points to the file that lists your hosts

Avoiding security risks with ansible.cfg in the current directory

If Ansible were to load ansible.cfg from a world-writable current working directory, it would create a serious security risk. Another user could place their own config file there, designed to make Ansible run malicious code both locally and remotely, possibly with elevated privileges. For this reason, Ansible will not automatically load a config file from the current working directory if the directory is world-writable.

If you depend on using Ansible with a config file in the current working directory, the best way to avoid this problem is to restrict access to your Ansible directories to particular user(s) and/or group(s). If your Ansible directories live on a filesystem which has to emulate Unix permissions, like Vagrant or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), you may, at first, not know how you can fix this as chmod, chown, and chgrp might not work there. In most of those cases, the correct fix is to modify the mount options of the filesystem so the files and directories are readable and writable by the users and groups running Ansible but closed to others. For more details on the correct settings, see:

• for Vagrant, the Vagrant documentation covers synced folder permissions.
• for WSL, the WSL docs and this Microsoft blog post cover mount options.

If you absolutely depend on storing your Ansible config in a world-writable current working directory, you can explicitly specify the config file via the ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable. Please take appropriate steps to mitigate the security concerns above before doing so.

Relative paths for configuration

You can specify a relative path for many configuration options. In most of those cases the path used will be relative to the ansible.cfg file used for the current execution. If you need a path relative to your current working directory (CWD) you can use the {{CWD}} macro to specify it. We do not recommend this approach, as using your CWD as the root of relative paths can be a security risk. For example: cd /tmp; secureinfo=./newrootpassword ansible-playbook ~/safestuff/change_root_pwd.yml.

Common Options

This is a copy of the options available from our release, your local install might have extra options due to additional plugins, you can use the command line utility mentioned above (ansible-config) to browse through those.

ACTION_WARNINGS

Description

By default Ansible will issue a warning when received from a task action (module or action plugin) These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.Type

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.5IniSection

[defaults]Key

action_warningsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ACTION_WARNINGS

AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

Description

Display an agnostic become prompt instead of displaying a prompt containing the command line supplied become methodType

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.5IniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

agnostic_become_promptEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

ALLOW_WORLD_READABLE_TMPFILES

Description

This setting has been moved to the individual shell plugins as a plugin option Shell plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the shell plugin adding additional options, like variables. This message will be removed in 2.14.Type

booleanDefault

FalseDeprecated in

2.14Deprecated detail

moved to shell pluginsDeprecated alternatives

world_readable_tmp

ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PATH

Description

Specify where to look for the ansible-connection script. This location will be checked before searching $PATH. If null, ansible will start with the same directory as the ansible script.Type

pathDefault

NoneVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[persistent_connection]Key

ansible_connection_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PATH

ANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLIST

Description

White list of cowsay templates that are ‘safe’ to use, set to empty list if you want to enable all installed templates.Type

listDefault

['bud-frogs', 'bunny', 'cheese', 'daemon', 'default', 'dragon', 'elephant-in-snake', 'elephant', 'eyes', 'hellokitty', 'kitty', 'luke-koala', 'meow', 'milk', 'moofasa', 'moose', 'ren', 'sheep', 'small', 'stegosaurus', 'stimpy', 'supermilker', 'three-eyes', 'turkey', 'turtle', 'tux', 'udder', 'vader-koala', 'vader', 'www']Ini

• Section[defaults]Keycow_whitelistDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativescowsay_enabled_stencils
• Section[defaults]Keycowsay_enabled_stencilsVersion Added2.11

Environment

• VariableANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLISTVersion Added2.11
• VariableANSIBLE_COW_WHITELISTDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativesANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLIST

ANSIBLE_COW_PATH

Description

Specify a custom cowsay path or swap in your cowsay implementation of choiceType

stringDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

cowpathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COW_PATH

ANSIBLE_COW_SELECTION

Description

This allows you to chose a specific cowsay stencil for the banners or use ‘random’ to cycle through them.Default

defaultIniSection

[defaults]Key

cow_selectionEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COW_SELECTION

ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR

Description

This option forces color mode even when running without a TTY or the “nocolor” setting is True.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

force_colorEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR

ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR

Description

This setting allows suppressing colorizing output, which is used to give a better indication of failure and status information.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

nocolorEnvironment

• VariableANSIBLE_NOCOLOR
• VariableNO_COLORVersion Added2.11

ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

Description

If you have cowsay installed but want to avoid the ‘cows’ (why????), use this.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

nocowsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

ANSIBLE_PIPELINING

Description

Pipelining, if supported by the connection plugin, reduces the number of network operations required to execute a module on the remote server, by executing many Ansible modules without actual file transfer. This can result in a very significant performance improvement when enabled. However this conflicts with privilege escalation (become). For example, when using ‘sudo:’ operations you must first disable ‘requiretty’ in /etc/sudoers on all managed hosts, which is why it is disabled by default. This option is disabled if ANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES is enabled. This is a global option, each connection plugin can override either by having more specific options or not supporting pipelining at all.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIni

• Section[connection]Keypipelining
• Section[defaults]Keypipelining

EnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PIPELINING

ANY_ERRORS_FATAL

Description

Sets the default value for the any_errors_fatal keyword, if True, Task failures will be considered fatal errors.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.4IniSection

[defaults]Key

any_errors_fatalEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ANY_ERRORS_FATAL

BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USER

Description

This setting controls if become is skipped when remote user and become user are the same. I.E root sudo to root. If executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_allow_same_userEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USER

BECOME_PASSWORD_FILE

Description

The password file to use for the become plugin. –become-password-file. If executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.Type

pathDefault

NoneVersion Added

2.12IniSection

[defaults]Key

become_password_fileEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_PASSWORD_FILE

BECOME_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Become Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/become:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/becomeVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

become_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_PLUGINS

CACHE_PLUGIN

Description

Chooses which cache plugin to use, the default ‘memory’ is ephemeral.Default

memoryIniSection

[defaults]Key

fact_cachingEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN

CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Description

Defines connection or path information for the cache pluginDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

fact_caching_connectionEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Description

Prefix to use for cache plugin files/tablesDefault

ansible_factsIniSection

[defaults]Key

fact_caching_prefixEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

Description

Expiration timeout for the cache plugin dataType

integerDefault

86400IniSection

[defaults]Key

fact_caching_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LIST

Description

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluationType

listDefault

[]Ini

• Section[defaults]Keycallable_whitelistDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativescallable_enabled
• Section[defaults]Keycallable_enabledVersion Added2.11

Environment

• VariableANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLEDVersion Added2.11
• VariableANSIBLE_CALLABLE_WHITELISTDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativesANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLED

CALLBACKS_ENABLED

Description

List of enabled callbacks, not all callbacks need enabling, but many of those shipped with Ansible do as we don’t want them activated by default.Type

listDefault

[]Ini

• Section[defaults]Keycallback_whitelistDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativescallbacks_enabled
• Section[defaults]Keycallbacks_enabledVersion Added2.11

Environment

• VariableANSIBLE_CALLBACK_WHITELISTDeprecated in2.15Deprecated detailnormalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternativesANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLED
• VariableANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLEDVersion Added2.11

COLLECTIONS_ON_ANSIBLE_VERSION_MISMATCH

Description

When a collection is loaded that does not support the running Ansible version (via the collection metadata key requires_ansible), the default behavior is to issue a warning and continue anyway. Setting this value to ignore skips the warning entirely, while setting it to fatal will immediately halt Ansible execution.Default

warningChoices

• error
• warning
• ignore

IniSection

[defaults]Key

collections_on_ansible_version_mismatchEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_ON_ANSIBLE_VERSION_MISMATCH

COLLECTIONS_PATHS

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for collections content. Collections must be in nested subdirectories, not directly in these directories. For example, if COLLECTIONS_PATHS includes ~/.ansible/collections, and you want to add my.collection to that directory, it must be saved as ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/my/collection.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collectionsIni

• Section[defaults]Keycollections_paths
• Section[defaults]Keycollections_pathVersion Added2.10

Environment

• VariableANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATHVersion Added2.10
• VariableANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATHS

COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

Description

A boolean to enable or disable scanning the sys.path for installed collectionsType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

collections_scan_sys_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

COLOR_CHANGED

Description

Defines the color to use on ‘Changed’ task statusDefault

yellowChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

changedEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CHANGED

COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

Description

Defines the default color to use for ansible-consoleDefault

whiteChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

Version Added

2.7IniSection

[colors]Key

console_promptEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

COLOR_DEBUG

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting debug messagesDefault

dark grayChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

debugEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEBUG

COLOR_DEPRECATE

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting deprecation messagesDefault

purpleChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

deprecateEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEPRECATE

COLOR_DIFF_ADD

Description

Defines the color to use when showing added lines in diffsDefault

greenChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

diff_addEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_ADD

COLOR_DIFF_LINES

Description

Defines the color to use when showing diffsDefault

cyanChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

diff_linesEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_LINES

COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

Description

Defines the color to use when showing removed lines in diffsDefault

redChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

diff_removeEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

COLOR_ERROR

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting error messagesDefault

redChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

errorEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_ERROR

COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

Description

Defines the color to use for highlightingDefault

whiteChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

highlightEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

COLOR_OK

Description

Defines the color to use when showing ‘OK’ task statusDefault

greenChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

okEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_OK

COLOR_SKIP

Description

Defines the color to use when showing ‘Skipped’ task statusDefault

cyanChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

skipEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_SKIP

COLOR_UNREACHABLE

Description

Defines the color to use on ‘Unreachable’ statusDefault

bright redChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

unreachableEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_UNREACHABLE

COLOR_VERBOSE

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting verbose messages. i.e those that show with ‘-v’s.Default

blueChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

verboseEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_VERBOSE

COLOR_WARN

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting warning messagesDefault

bright purpleChoices

• black
• bright gray
• blue
• white
• green
• bright blue
• cyan
• bright green
• red
• bright cyan
• purple
• bright red
• yellow
• bright purple
• dark gray
• bright yellow
• magenta
• bright magenta
• normal

IniSection

[colors]Key

warnEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_WARN

COMMAND_WARNINGS

Description

Ansible can issue a warning when the shell or command module is used and the command appears to be similar to an existing Ansible module. These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False. You can also control this at the task level with the module option warn. As of version 2.11, this is disabled by default.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

1.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

command_warningsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_COMMAND_WARNINGSDeprecated in

2.14Deprecated detail

the command warnings feature is being removed

CONNECTION_FACTS_MODULES

Description

Which modules to run during a play’s fact gathering stage based on connectionType

dictDefault

{'asa': 'ansible.legacy.asa_facts', 'cisco.asa.asa': 'cisco.asa.asa_facts', 'eos': 'ansible.legacy.eos_facts', 'arista.eos.eos': 'arista.eos.eos_facts', 'frr': 'ansible.legacy.frr_facts', 'frr.frr.frr': 'frr.frr.frr_facts', 'ios': 'ansible.legacy.ios_facts', 'cisco.ios.ios': 'cisco.ios.ios_facts', 'iosxr': 'ansible.legacy.iosxr_facts', 'cisco.iosxr.iosxr': 'cisco.iosxr.iosxr_facts', 'junos': 'ansible.legacy.junos_facts', 'junipernetworks.junos.junos': 'junipernetworks.junos.junos_facts', 'nxos': 'ansible.legacy.nxos_facts', 'cisco.nxos.nxos': 'cisco.nxos.nxos_facts', 'vyos': 'ansible.legacy.vyos_facts', 'vyos.vyos.vyos': 'vyos.vyos.vyos_facts', 'exos': 'ansible.legacy.exos_facts', 'extreme.exos.exos': 'extreme.exos.exos_facts', 'slxos': 'ansible.legacy.slxos_facts', 'extreme.slxos.slxos': 'extreme.slxos.slxos_facts', 'voss': 'ansible.legacy.voss_facts', 'extreme.voss.voss': 'extreme.voss.voss_facts', 'ironware': 'ansible.legacy.ironware_facts', 'community.network.ironware': 'community.network.ironware_facts'}

CONNECTION_PASSWORD_FILE

Description

The password file to use for the connection plugin. –connection-password-file.Type

pathDefault

NoneVersion Added

2.12IniSection

[defaults]Key

connection_password_fileEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PASSWORD_FILE

COVERAGE_REMOTE_OUTPUT

Description

Sets the output directory on the remote host to generate coverage reports to. Currently only used for remote coverage on PowerShell modules. This is for internal use only.Type

strVersion Added

2.9EnvironmentVariable

_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_OUTPUTVariablesname

_ansible_coverage_remote_output

COVERAGE_REMOTE_PATHS

Description

A list of paths for files on the Ansible controller to run coverage for when executing on the remote host. Only files that match the path glob will have its coverage collected. Multiple path globs can be specified and are separated by :. Currently only used for remote coverage on PowerShell modules. This is for internal use only.Type

strDefault

*Version Added

2.9EnvironmentVariable

_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_PATH_FILTER

DEFAULT_ACTION_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Action Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/action:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/actionIniSection

[defaults]Key

action_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ACTION_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_ALLOW_UNSAFE_LOOKUPS

Description

When enabled, this option allows lookup plugins (whether used in variables as {{lookup('foo')}} or as a loop as with_foo) to return data that is not marked ‘unsafe’. By default, such data is marked as unsafe to prevent the templating engine from evaluating any jinja2 templating language, as this could represent a security risk. This option is provided to allow for backward compatibility, however users should first consider adding allow_unsafe=True to any lookups which may be expected to contain data which may be run through the templating engine lateType

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.2.3IniSection

[defaults]Key

allow_unsafe_lookups

DEFAULT_ASK_PASS

Description

This controls whether an Ansible playbook should prompt for a login password. If using SSH keys for authentication, you probably do not needed to change this setting.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

ask_passEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ASK_PASS

DEFAULT_ASK_VAULT_PASS

Description

This controls whether an Ansible playbook should prompt for a vault password.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

ask_vault_passEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ASK_VAULT_PASS

DEFAULT_BECOME

Description

Toggles the use of privilege escalation, allowing you to ‘become’ another user after login.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

becomeEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME

DEFAULT_BECOME_ASK_PASS

Description

Toggle to prompt for privilege escalation password.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_ask_passEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_ASK_PASS

DEFAULT_BECOME_EXE

Description

executable to use for privilege escalation, otherwise Ansible will depend on PATHDefault

NoneIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_exeEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_EXE

DEFAULT_BECOME_FLAGS

Description

Flags to pass to the privilege escalation executable.Default

NoneIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_flagsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_FLAGS

DEFAULT_BECOME_METHOD

Description

Privilege escalation method to use when become is enabled.Default

sudoIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_methodEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_METHOD

DEFAULT_BECOME_USER

Description

The user your login/remote user ‘becomes’ when using privilege escalation, most systems will use ‘root’ when no user is specified.Default

rootIniSection

[privilege_escalation]Key

become_userEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_USER

DEFAULT_CACHE_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Cache Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/cache:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/cacheIniSection

[defaults]Key

cache_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CALLBACK_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Callback Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/callback:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/callbackIniSection

[defaults]Key

callback_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CLICONF_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Cliconf Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/cliconf:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/cliconfIniSection

[defaults]Key

cliconf_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CLICONF_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CONNECTION_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Connection Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/connection:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/connectionIniSection

[defaults]Key

connection_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_DEBUG

Description

Toggles debug output in Ansible. This is very verbose and can hinder multiprocessing. Debug output can also include secret information despite no_log settings being enabled, which means debug mode should not be used in production.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

debugEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DEBUG

DEFAULT_EXECUTABLE

Description

This indicates the command to use to spawn a shell under for Ansible’s execution needs on a target. Users may need to change this in rare instances when shell usage is constrained, but in most cases it may be left as is.Default

/bin/shIniSection

[defaults]Key

executableEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_EXECUTABLE

DEFAULT_FACT_PATH

Description

This option allows you to globally configure a custom path for ‘local_facts’ for the implied M(ansible.builtin.setup) task when using fact gathering. If not set, it will fallback to the default from the M(ansible.builtin.setup) module: /etc/ansible/facts.d. This does not affect user defined tasks that use the M(ansible.builtin.setup) module.Type

stringDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

fact_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FACT_PATH

DEFAULT_FILTER_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Jinja2 Filter Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/filter:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/filterIniSection

[defaults]Key

filter_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FILTER_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_FORCE_HANDLERS

Description

This option controls if notified handlers run on a host even if a failure occurs on that host. When false, the handlers will not run if a failure has occurred on a host. This can also be set per play or on the command line. See Handlers and Failure for more details.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

1.9.1IniSection

[defaults]Key

force_handlersEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FORCE_HANDLERS

DEFAULT_FORKS

Description

Maximum number of forks Ansible will use to execute tasks on target hosts.Type

integerDefault

5IniSection

[defaults]Key

forksEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FORKS

DEFAULT_GATHER_SUBSET

Description

Set the gather_subset option for the M(ansible.builtin.setup) task in the implicit fact gathering. See the module documentation for specifics. It does not apply to user defined M(ansible.builtin.setup) tasks.Type

listDefault

['all']Version Added

2.1IniSection

[defaults]Key

gather_subsetEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GATHER_SUBSET

DEFAULT_GATHER_TIMEOUT

Description

Set the timeout in seconds for the implicit fact gathering. It does not apply to user defined M(ansible.builtin.setup) tasks.Type

integerDefault

10IniSection

[defaults]Key

gather_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GATHER_TIMEOUT

DEFAULT_GATHERING

Description

This setting controls the default policy of fact gathering (facts discovered about remote systems). When ‘implicit’ (the default), the cache plugin will be ignored and facts will be gathered per play unless ‘gather_facts: False’ is set. When ‘explicit’ the inverse is true, facts will not be gathered unless directly requested in the play. The ‘smart’ value means each new host that has no facts discovered will be scanned, but if the same host is addressed in multiple plays it will not be contacted again in the playbook run. This option can be useful for those wishing to save fact gathering time. Both ‘smart’ and ‘explicit’ will use the cache plugin.Default

implicitChoices

• smart
• explicit
• implicit

Version Added

1.6IniSection

[defaults]Key

gatheringEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GATHERING

DEFAULT_HASH_BEHAVIOUR

Description

This setting controls how duplicate definitions of dictionary variables (aka hash, map, associative array) are handled in Ansible. This does not affect variables whose values are scalars (integers, strings) or arrays. WARNING, changing this setting is not recommended as this is fragile and makes your content (plays, roles, collections) non portable, leading to continual confusion and misuse. Don’t change this setting unless you think you have an absolute need for it. We recommend avoiding reusing variable names and relying on the combine filter and vars and varnames lookups to create merged versions of the individual variables. In our experience this is rarely really needed and a sign that too much complexity has been introduced into the data structures and plays. For some uses you can also look into custom vars_plugins to merge on input, even substituting the default host_group_vars that is in charge of parsing the host_vars/ and group_vars/ directories. Most users of this setting are only interested in inventory scope, but the setting itself affects all sources and makes debugging even harder. All playbooks and roles in the official examples repos assume the default for this setting. Changing the setting to merge applies across variable sources, but many sources will internally still overwrite the variables. For example include_vars will dedupe variables internally before updating Ansible, with ‘last defined’ overwriting previous definitions in same file. The Ansible project recommends you avoid “merge“ for new projects. It is the intention of the Ansible developers to eventually deprecate and remove this setting, but it is being kept as some users do heavily rely on it. New projects should avoid ‘merge’.Type

stringDefault

replaceChoices

• replaceAny variable that is defined more than once is overwritten using the order from variable precedence rules (highest wins).
• mergeAny dictionary variable will be recursively merged with new definitions across the different variable definition sources.

IniSection

[defaults]Key

hash_behaviourEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_HASH_BEHAVIOUR

DEFAULT_HOST_LIST

Description

Comma separated list of Ansible inventory sourcesType

pathlistDefault

/etc/ansible/hostsIniSection

[defaults]Key

inventoryEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY

DEFAULT_HTTPAPI_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for HttpApi Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/httpapi:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/httpapiIniSection

[defaults]Key

httpapi_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_HTTPAPI_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_INTERNAL_POLL_INTERVAL

Description

This sets the interval (in seconds) of Ansible internal processes polling each other. Lower values improve performance with large playbooks at the expense of extra CPU load. Higher values are more suitable for Ansible usage in automation scenarios, when UI responsiveness is not required but CPU usage might be a concern. The default corresponds to the value hardcoded in Ansible <= 2.1Type

floatDefault

0.001Version Added

2.2IniSection

[defaults]Key

internal_poll_interval

DEFAULT_INVENTORY_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Inventory Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/inventory:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/inventoryIniSection

[defaults]Key

inventory_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_JINJA2_EXTENSIONS

Description

This is a developer-specific feature that allows enabling additional Jinja2 extensions. See the Jinja2 documentation for details. If you do not know what these do, you probably don’t need to change this setting :)Default

[]IniSection

[defaults]Key

jinja2_extensionsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_JINJA2_EXTENSIONS

DEFAULT_JINJA2_NATIVE

Description

This option preserves variable types during template operations. This requires Jinja2 >= 2.10.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.7IniSection

[defaults]Key

jinja2_nativeEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE

DEFAULT_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES

Description

Enables/disables the cleaning up of the temporary files Ansible used to execute the tasks on the remote. If this option is enabled it will disable ANSIBLE_PIPELINING.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

keep_remote_filesEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES

DEFAULT_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL

Description

This setting causes libvirt to connect to lxc containers by passing –noseclabel to virsh. This is necessary when running on systems which do not have SELinux.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.1IniSection

[selinux]Key

libvirt_lxc_noseclabelEnvironment

• VariableANSIBLE_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL
• VariableLIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABELDeprecated in2.12Deprecated detailenvironment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternativesthe ANSIBLE_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL environment variable

DEFAULT_LOAD_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

Description

Controls whether callback plugins are loaded when running /usr/bin/ansible. This may be used to log activity from the command line, send notifications, and so on. Callback plugins are always loaded for ansible-playbook.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

1.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

bin_ansible_callbacksEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOAD_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_LOCAL_TMP

Description

Temporary directory for Ansible to use on the controller.Type

tmppathDefault

~/.ansible/tmpIniSection

[defaults]Key

local_tmpEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOCAL_TEMP

DEFAULT_LOG_FILTER

Description

List of logger names to filter out of the log fileType

listDefault

[]IniSection

[defaults]Key

log_filterEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOG_FILTER

DEFAULT_LOG_PATH

Description

File to which Ansible will log on the controller. When empty logging is disabled.Type

pathDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

log_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOG_PATH

DEFAULT_LOOKUP_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Lookup Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/lookup:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/lookupIniSection

[defaults]Key

lookup_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOOKUP_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_MANAGED_STR

Description

Sets the macro for the ‘ansible_managed’ variable available for M(ansible.builtin.template) and M(ansible.windows.win_template) modules. This is only relevant for those two modules.Default

Ansible managedIniSection

[defaults]Key

ansible_managed

DEFAULT_MODULE_ARGS

Description

This sets the default arguments to pass to the ansible adhoc binary if no -a is specified.Default

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

module_argsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS

DEFAULT_MODULE_COMPRESSION

Description

Compression scheme to use when transferring Python modules to the target.Default

ZIP_DEFLATEDIniSection

[defaults]Key

module_compression

DEFAULT_MODULE_NAME

Description

Module to use with the ansible AdHoc command, if none is specified via -m.Default

commandIniSection

[defaults]Key

module_name

DEFAULT_MODULE_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Modules.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/modules:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modulesIniSection

[defaults]Key

libraryEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LIBRARY

DEFAULT_MODULE_UTILS_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Module utils files, which are shared by modules.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/module_utils:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/module_utilsIniSection

[defaults]Key

module_utilsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_MODULE_UTILS

DEFAULT_NETCONF_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Netconf Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/netconf:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/netconfIniSection

[defaults]Key

netconf_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NETCONF_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_NO_LOG

Description

Toggle Ansible’s display and logging of task details, mainly used to avoid security disclosures.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

no_logEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NO_LOG

DEFAULT_NO_TARGET_SYSLOG

Description

Toggle Ansible logging to syslog on the target when it executes tasks. On Windows hosts this will disable a newer style PowerShell modules from writting to the event log.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

no_target_syslogEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NO_TARGET_SYSLOGVariablesname

ansible_no_target_syslog :Version Added: 2.10

DEFAULT_NULL_REPRESENTATION

Description

What templating should return as a ‘null’ value. When not set it will let Jinja2 decide.Type

noneDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

null_representationEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NULL_REPRESENTATION

DEFAULT_POLL_INTERVAL

Description

For asynchronous tasks in Ansible (covered in Asynchronous Actions and Polling), this is how often to check back on the status of those tasks when an explicit poll interval is not supplied. The default is a reasonably moderate 15 seconds which is a tradeoff between checking in frequently and providing a quick turnaround when something may have completed.Type

integerDefault

15IniSection

[defaults]Key

poll_intervalEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_POLL_INTERVAL

DEFAULT_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE

Description

Option for connections using a certificate or key file to authenticate, rather than an agent or passwords, you can set the default value here to avoid re-specifying –private-key with every invocation.Type

pathDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

private_key_fileEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE

DEFAULT_PRIVATE_ROLE_VARS

Description

Makes role variables inaccessible from other roles. This was introduced as a way to reset role variables to default values if a role is used more than once in a playbook.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

private_role_varsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_ROLE_VARS

DEFAULT_REMOTE_PORT

Description

Port to use in remote connections, when blank it will use the connection plugin default.Type

integerDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

remote_portEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_REMOTE_PORT

DEFAULT_REMOTE_USER

Description

Sets the login user for the target machines When blank it uses the connection plugin’s default, normally the user currently executing Ansible.IniSection

[defaults]Key

remote_userEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_REMOTE_USER

DEFAULT_ROLES_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Roles.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/rolesIniSection

[defaults]Key

roles_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH

DEFAULT_SELINUX_SPECIAL_FS

Description

Some filesystems do not support safe operations and/or return inconsistent errors, this setting makes Ansible ‘tolerate’ those in the list w/o causing fatal errors. Data corruption may occur and writes are not always verified when a filesystem is in the list.Type

listDefault

fuse, nfs, vboxsf, ramfs, 9p, vfatIniSection

[selinux]Key

special_context_filesystemsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SELINUX_SPECIAL_FS :Version Added: 2.9

DEFAULT_STDOUT_CALLBACK

Description

Set the main callback used to display Ansible output, you can only have one at a time. You can have many other callbacks, but just one can be in charge of stdout.Default

defaultIniSection

[defaults]Key

stdout_callbackEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK

DEFAULT_STRATEGY

Description

Set the default strategy used for plays.Default

linearVersion Added

2.3IniSection

[defaults]Key

strategyEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY

DEFAULT_STRATEGY_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Strategy Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/strategy:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/strategyIniSection

[defaults]Key

strategy_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_SU

Description

Toggle the use of “su” for tasks.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

suEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SU

DEFAULT_SYSLOG_FACILITY

Description

Syslog facility to use when Ansible logs to the remote targetDefault

LOG_USERIniSection

[defaults]Key

syslog_facilityEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SYSLOG_FACILITY

DEFAULT_TERMINAL_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Terminal Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/terminal:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/terminalIniSection

[defaults]Key

terminal_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TERMINAL_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_TEST_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Jinja2 Test Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/test:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/testIniSection

[defaults]Key

test_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TEST_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

Description

This is the default timeout for connection plugins to use.Type

integerDefault

10IniSection

[defaults]Key

timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TIMEOUT

DEFAULT_TRANSPORT

Description

Default connection plugin to use, the ‘smart’ option will toggle between ‘ssh’ and ‘paramiko’ depending on controller OS and ssh versionsDefault

smartIniSection

[defaults]Key

transportEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TRANSPORT

DEFAULT_UNDEFINED_VAR_BEHAVIOR

Description

When True, this causes ansible templating to fail steps that reference variable names that are likely typoed. Otherwise, any ‘{{ template_expression }}’ that contains undefined variables will be rendered in a template or ansible action line exactly as written.Type

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

1.3IniSection

[defaults]Key

error_on_undefined_varsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_UNDEFINED_VARS

DEFAULT_VARS_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Vars Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/vars:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/varsIniSection

[defaults]Key

vars_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VARS_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_VAULT_ENCRYPT_IDENTITY

Description

The vault_id to use for encrypting by default. If multiple vault_ids are provided, this specifies which to use for encryption. The –encrypt-vault-id cli option overrides the configured value.IniSection

[defaults]Key

vault_encrypt_identityEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_ENCRYPT_IDENTITY

DEFAULT_VAULT_ID_MATCH

Description

If true, decrypting vaults with a vault id will only try the password from the matching vault-idDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

vault_id_matchEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_ID_MATCH

DEFAULT_VAULT_IDENTITY

Description

The label to use for the default vault id label in cases where a vault id label is not providedDefault

defaultIniSection

[defaults]Key

vault_identityEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_IDENTITY

DEFAULT_VAULT_IDENTITY_LIST

Description

A list of vault-ids to use by default. Equivalent to multiple –vault-id args. Vault-ids are tried in order.Type

listDefault

[]IniSection

[defaults]Key

vault_identity_listEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_IDENTITY_LIST

DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

Description

The vault password file to use. Equivalent to –vault-password-file or –vault-id If executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.Type

pathDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

vault_password_fileEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

DEFAULT_VERBOSITY

Description

Sets the default verbosity, equivalent to the number of -v passed in the command line.Type

integerDefault

0IniSection

[defaults]Key

verbosityEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY

DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

Description

Toggle to control the showing of deprecation warningsType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

deprecation_warningsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

DEVEL_WARNING

Description

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running develType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

devel_warningEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DEVEL_WARNING

DIFF_ALWAYS

Description

Configuration toggle to tell modules to show differences when in ‘changed’ status, equivalent to --diff.Type

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[diff]Key

alwaysEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DIFF_ALWAYS

DIFF_CONTEXT

Description

How many lines of context to show when displaying the differences between files.Type

integerDefault

3IniSection

[diff]Key

contextEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DIFF_CONTEXT

DISPLAY_ARGS_TO_STDOUT

Description

Normally ansible-playbook will print a header for each task that is run. These headers will contain the name: field from the task if you specified one. If you didn’t then ansible-playbook uses the task’s action to help you tell which task is presently running. Sometimes you run many of the same action and so you want more information about the task to differentiate it from others of the same action. If you set this variable to True in the config then ansible-playbook will also include the task’s arguments in the header. This setting defaults to False because there is a chance that you have sensitive values in your parameters and you do not want those to be printed. If you set this to True you should be sure that you have secured your environment’s stdout (no one can shoulder surf your screen and you aren’t saving stdout to an insecure file) or made sure that all of your playbooks explicitly added the no_log: True parameter to tasks which have sensitive values See How do I keep secret data in my playbook? for more information.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.1IniSection

[defaults]Key

display_args_to_stdoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_ARGS_TO_STDOUT

DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

Description

Toggle to control displaying skipped task/host entries in a task in the default callbackType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

display_skipped_hostsEnvironment

• VariableANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS
• VariableDISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTSDeprecated in2.12Deprecated detailenvironment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternativesthe ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS environment variable

DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Documentation Fragments Plugins.Type

pathspecDefault

~/.ansible/plugins/doc_fragments:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/doc_fragmentsIniSection

[defaults]Key

doc_fragment_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGINS

DOCSITE_ROOT_URL

Description

Root docsite URL used to generate docs URLs in warning/error text; must be an absolute URL with valid scheme and trailing slash.Default

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/Version Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

docsite_root_url

DUPLICATE_YAML_DICT_KEY

Description

By default Ansible will issue a warning when a duplicate dict key is encountered in YAML. These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.Type

stringDefault

warnChoices

• warn
• error
• ignore

Version Added

2.9IniSection

[defaults]Key

duplicate_dict_keyEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_DUPLICATE_YAML_DICT_KEY

ENABLE_TASK_DEBUGGER

Description

Whether or not to enable the task debugger, this previously was done as a strategy plugin. Now all strategy plugins can inherit this behavior. The debugger defaults to activating when a task is failed on unreachable. Use the debugger keyword for more flexibility.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.5IniSection

[defaults]Key

enable_task_debuggerEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ENABLE_TASK_DEBUGGER

ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLER

Description

Toggle to allow missing handlers to become a warning instead of an error when notifying.Type

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

error_on_missing_handlerEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLER

FACTS_MODULES

Description

Which modules to run during a play’s fact gathering stage, using the default of ‘smart’ will try to figure it out based on connection type.Type

listDefault

['smart']IniSection

[defaults]Key

facts_modulesEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_FACTS_MODULESVariablesname

ansible_facts_modules

GALAXY_CACHE_DIR

Description

The directory that stores cached responses from a Galaxy server. This is only used by the ansible-galaxy collection install and download commands. Cache files inside this dir will be ignored if they are world writable.Type

pathDefault

~/.ansible/galaxy_cacheVersion Added

2.11IniSection

[galaxy]Key

cache_dirEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_CACHE_DIR

GALAXY_DISPLAY_PROGRESS

Description

Some steps in ansible-galaxy display a progress wheel which can cause issues on certain displays or when outputing the stdout to a file. This config option controls whether the display wheel is shown or not. The default is to show the display wheel if stdout has a tty.Type

boolDefault

NoneVersion Added

2.10IniSection

[galaxy]Key

display_progressEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_DISPLAY_PROGRESS

GALAXY_IGNORE_CERTS

Description

If set to yes, ansible-galaxy will not validate TLS certificates. This can be useful for testing against a server with a self-signed certificate.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[galaxy]Key

ignore_certsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_IGNORE

GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON

Description

Role or collection skeleton directory to use as a template for the init action in ansible-galaxy, same as --role-skeleton.Type

pathIniSection

[galaxy]Key

role_skeletonEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON

GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

Description

patterns of files to ignore inside a Galaxy role or collection skeleton directoryType

listDefault

['^.git$', '^.*/.git_keep$']IniSection

[galaxy]Key

role_skeleton_ignoreEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

GALAXY_SERVER

Description

URL to prepend when roles don’t specify the full URI, assume they are referencing this server as the source.Default

https://galaxy.ansible.comIniSection

[galaxy]Key

serverEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER

GALAXY_SERVER_LIST

Description

A list of Galaxy servers to use when installing a collection. The value corresponds to the config ini header [galaxy_server.{{item}}] which defines the server details. See Configuring the ansible-galaxy client for more details on how to define a Galaxy server. The order of servers in this list is used to as the order in which a collection is resolved. Setting this config option will ignore the GALAXY_SERVER config option.Type

listVersion Added

2.9IniSection

[galaxy]Key

server_listEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_LIST

GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

Description

Local path to galaxy access token fileType

pathDefault

~/.ansible/galaxy_tokenVersion Added

2.9IniSection

[galaxy]Key

token_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

HOST_KEY_CHECKING

Description

Set this to “False” if you want to avoid host key checking by the underlying tools Ansible uses to connect to the hostType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

host_key_checkingEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING

HOST_PATTERN_MISMATCH

Description

This setting changes the behaviour of mismatched host patterns, it allows you to force a fatal error, a warning or just ignore itDefault

warningChoices

• warning
• error
• ignore

Version Added

2.8IniSection

[inventory]Key

host_pattern_mismatchEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_HOST_PATTERN_MISMATCH

INJECT_FACTS_AS_VARS

Description

Facts are available inside the ansible_facts variable, this setting also pushes them as their own vars in the main namespace. Unlike inside the ansible_facts dictionary, these will have an ansible_ prefix.Type

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.5IniSection

[defaults]Key

inject_facts_as_varsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INJECT_FACT_VARS

INTERPRETER_PYTHON

Description

Path to the Python interpreter to be used for module execution on remote targets, or an automatic discovery mode. Supported discovery modes are auto (the default), auto_silent, auto_legacy, and auto_legacy_silent. All discovery modes employ a lookup table to use the included system Python (on distributions known to include one), falling back to a fixed ordered list of well-known Python interpreter locations if a platform-specific default is not available. The fallback behavior will issue a warning that the interpreter should be set explicitly (since interpreters installed later may change which one is used). This warning behavior can be disabled by setting auto_silent or auto_legacy_silent. The value of auto_legacy provides all the same behavior, but for backwards-compatibility with older Ansible releases that always defaulted to /usr/bin/python, will use that interpreter if present.Default

autoVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

interpreter_pythonEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PYTHON_INTERPRETERVariablesname

ansible_python_interpreter

INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP

Default

{'centos': {'6': '/usr/bin/python', '8': '/usr/libexec/platform-python', '9': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'debian': {'8': '/usr/bin/python', '10': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'fedora': {'23': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'oracle': {'6': '/usr/bin/python', '8': '/usr/libexec/platform-python', '9': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'redhat': {'6': '/usr/bin/python', '8': '/usr/libexec/platform-python', '9': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'rhel': {'6': '/usr/bin/python', '8': '/usr/libexec/platform-python', '9': '/usr/bin/python3'}, 'ubuntu': {'14': '/usr/bin/python', '16': '/usr/bin/python3'}}Version Added

2.8

INTERPRETER_PYTHON_FALLBACK

Type

listDefault

['python3.10', 'python3.9', 'python3.8', 'python3.7', 'python3.6', 'python3.5', '/usr/bin/python3', '/usr/libexec/platform-python', 'python2.7', 'python2.6', '/usr/bin/python', 'python']Version Added

2.8Variablesname

ansible_interpreter_python_fallback

INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

Description

If ‘false’, invalid attributes for a task will result in warnings instead of errorsType

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.7IniSection

[defaults]Key

invalid_task_attribute_failedEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

INVENTORY_ANY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILED

Description

If ‘true’, it is a fatal error when any given inventory source cannot be successfully parsed by any available inventory plugin; otherwise, this situation only attracts a warning.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.7IniSection

[inventory]Key

any_unparsed_is_failedEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ANY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILED

INVENTORY_CACHE_ENABLED

Description

Toggle to turn on inventory caching. This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory configuration. This message will be removed in 2.16.Type

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[inventory]Key

cacheEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

Description

The plugin for caching inventory. This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration. This message will be removed in 2.16.IniSection

[inventory]Key

cache_pluginEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Description

The inventory cache connection. This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration. This message will be removed in 2.16.IniSection

[inventory]Key

cache_connectionEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_CONNECTION

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Description

The table prefix for the cache plugin. This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration. This message will be removed in 2.16.Default

ansible_inventory_IniSection

[inventory]Key

cache_prefixEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Description

Expiration timeout for the inventory cache plugin data. This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins. The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration. This message will be removed in 2.16.Default

3600IniSection

[inventory]Key

cache_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

INVENTORY_ENABLED

Description

List of enabled inventory plugins, it also determines the order in which they are used.Type

listDefault

['host_list', 'script', 'auto', 'yaml', 'ini', 'toml']IniSection

[inventory]Key

enable_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ENABLED

INVENTORY_EXPORT

Description

Controls if ansible-inventory will accurately reflect Ansible’s view into inventory or its optimized for exporting.Type

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[inventory]Key

exportEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_EXPORT

INVENTORY_IGNORE_EXTS

Description

List of extensions to ignore when using a directory as an inventory sourceType

listDefault

{{(REJECT_EXTS + ('.orig', '.ini', '.cfg', '.retry'))}}Ini

• Section[defaults]Keyinventory_ignore_extensions
• Section[inventory]Keyignore_extensions

EnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE

INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERNS

Description

List of patterns to ignore when using a directory as an inventory sourceType

listDefault

[]Ini

• Section[defaults]Keyinventory_ignore_patterns
• Section[inventory]Keyignore_patterns

EnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE_REGEX

INVENTORY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILED

Description

If ‘true’ it is a fatal error if every single potential inventory source fails to parse, otherwise this situation will only attract a warning.Type

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[inventory]Key

unparsed_is_failedEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_UNPARSED_FAILED

JINJA2_NATIVE_WARNING

Description

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running a Jinja version older than required for jinja2_nativeType

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

jinja2_native_warningEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE_WARNING

LOCALHOST_WARNING

Description

By default Ansible will issue a warning when there are no hosts in the inventory. These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.Type

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.6IniSection

[defaults]Key

localhost_warningEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_LOCALHOST_WARNING

MAX_FILE_SIZE_FOR_DIFF

Description

Maximum size of files to be considered for diff displayType

intDefault

104448IniSection

[defaults]Key

max_diff_sizeEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_MAX_DIFF_SIZE

MODULE_IGNORE_EXTS

Description

List of extensions to ignore when looking for modules to load This is for rejecting script and binary module fallback extensionsType

listDefault

{{(REJECT_EXTS + ('.yaml', '.yml', '.ini'))}}IniSection

[defaults]Key

module_ignore_extsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_MODULE_IGNORE_EXTS

NETCONF_SSH_CONFIG

Description

This variable is used to enable bastion/jump host with netconf connection. If set to True the bastion/jump host ssh settings should be present in ~/.ssh/config file, alternatively it can be set to custom ssh configuration file path to read the bastion/jump host settings.Default

NoneIniSection

[netconf_connection]Key

ssh_configEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_NETCONF_SSH_CONFIG

NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

Type

listDefault

['eos', 'nxos', 'ios', 'iosxr', 'junos', 'enos', 'ce', 'vyos', 'sros', 'dellos9', 'dellos10', 'dellos6', 'asa', 'aruba', 'aireos', 'bigip', 'ironware', 'onyx', 'netconf', 'exos', 'voss', 'slxos']IniSection

[defaults]Key

network_group_modulesEnvironment

• VariableANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES
• VariableNETWORK_GROUP_MODULESDeprecated in2.12Deprecated detailenvironment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternativesthe ANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES environment variable

OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEARING

Description

Previously Ansible would only clear some of the plugin loading caches when loading new roles, this led to some behaviours in which a plugin loaded in prevoius plays would be unexpectedly ‘sticky’. This setting allows to return to that behaviour.Type

booleanDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

old_plugin_cache_clearEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEAR

PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[paramiko_connection]Key

host_key_auto_addEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

Type

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[paramiko_connection]Key

look_for_keysEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

PERSISTENT_COMMAND_TIMEOUT

Description

This controls the amount of time to wait for response from remote device before timing out persistent connection.Type

intDefault

30IniSection

[persistent_connection]Key

command_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_COMMAND_TIMEOUT

PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

Description

This controls the retry timeout for persistent connection to connect to the local domain socket.Type

integerDefault

15IniSection

[persistent_connection]Key

connect_retry_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

Description

This controls how long the persistent connection will remain idle before it is destroyed.Type

integerDefault

30IniSection

[persistent_connection]Key

connect_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

Description

Path to socket to be used by the connection persistence system.Type

pathDefault

~/.ansible/pcIniSection

[persistent_connection]Key

control_path_dirEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

PLAYBOOK_DIR

Description

A number of non-playbook CLIs have a --playbook-dir argument; this sets the default value for it.Type

pathVersion Added

2.9IniSection

[defaults]Key

playbook_dirEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PLAYBOOK_DIR

PLAYBOOK_VARS_ROOT

Description

This sets which playbook dirs will be used as a root to process vars plugins, which includes finding host_vars/group_vars The top option follows the traditional behaviour of using the top playbook in the chain to find the root directory. The bottom option follows the 2.4.0 behaviour of using the current playbook to find the root directory. The all option examines from the first parent to the current playbook.Default

topChoices

• top
• bottom
• all

Version Added

2.4.1IniSection

[defaults]Key

playbook_vars_rootEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PLAYBOOK_VARS_ROOT

PLUGIN_FILTERS_CFG

Description

A path to configuration for filtering which plugins installed on the system are allowed to be used. See Rejecting modules for details of the filter file’s format. The default is /etc/ansible/plugin_filters.ymlType

pathDefault

NoneVersion Added

2.5.0Ini

• Section[default]Keyplugin_filters_cfgDeprecated in2.12Deprecated detailspecifying “plugin_filters_cfg” under the “default” section is deprecatedDeprecated alternativesthe “defaults” section instead
• Section[defaults]Keyplugin_filters_cfg

PYTHON_MODULE_RLIMIT_NOFILE

Description

Attempts to set RLIMIT_NOFILE soft limit to the specified value when executing Python modules (can speed up subprocess usage on Python 2.x. See https://bugs.python.org/issue11284). The value will be limited by the existing hard limit. Default value of 0 does not attempt to adjust existing system-defined limits.Default

0Version Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

python_module_rlimit_nofileEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PYTHON_MODULE_RLIMIT_NOFILEVariablesname

ansible_python_module_rlimit_nofile

RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

Description

This controls whether a failed Ansible playbook should create a .retry file.Type

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

retry_files_enabledEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

RETRY_FILES_SAVE_PATH

Description

This sets the path in which Ansible will save .retry files when a playbook fails and retry files are enabled. This file will be overwritten after each run with the list of failed hosts from all plays.Type

pathDefault

NoneIniSection

[defaults]Key

retry_files_save_pathEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_SAVE_PATH

RUN_VARS_PLUGINS

Description

This setting can be used to optimize vars_plugin usage depending on user’s inventory size and play selection. Setting to C(demand) will run vars_plugins relative to inventory sources anytime vars are ‘demanded’ by tasks. Setting to C(start) will run vars_plugins relative to inventory sources after importing that inventory source.Type

strDefault

demandChoices

• demand
• start

Version Added

2.10IniSection

[defaults]Key

run_vars_pluginsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_RUN_VARS_PLUGINS

SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

Description

This adds the custom stats set via the set_stats plugin to the default outputType

boolDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

show_custom_statsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

STRING_CONVERSION_ACTION

Description

Action to take when a module parameter value is converted to a string (this does not affect variables). For string parameters, values such as ‘1.00’, “[‘a’, ‘b’,]”, and ‘yes’, ‘y’, etc. will be converted by the YAML parser unless fully quoted. Valid options are ‘error’, ‘warn’, and ‘ignore’. Since 2.8, this option defaults to ‘warn’ but will change to ‘error’ in 2.12.Type

stringDefault

warnVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

string_conversion_actionEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_STRING_CONVERSION_ACTION

STRING_TYPE_FILTERS

Description

This list of filters avoids ‘type conversion’ when templating variables Useful when you want to avoid conversion into lists or dictionaries for JSON strings, for example.Type

listDefault

['string', 'to_json', 'to_nice_json', 'to_yaml', 'to_nice_yaml', 'ppretty', 'json']IniSection

[jinja2]Key

dont_type_filtersEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_STRING_TYPE_FILTERS

SYSTEM_WARNINGS

Description

Allows disabling of warnings related to potential issues on the system running ansible itself (not on the managed hosts) These may include warnings about 3rd party packages or other conditions that should be resolved if possible.Type

booleanDefault

TrueIniSection

[defaults]Key

system_warningsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SYSTEM_WARNINGS

TAGS_RUN

Description

default list of tags to run in your plays, Skip Tags has precedence.Type

listDefault

[]Version Added

2.5IniSection

[tags]Key

runEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_RUN_TAGS

TAGS_SKIP

Description

default list of tags to skip in your plays, has precedence over Run TagsType

listDefault

[]Version Added

2.5IniSection

[tags]Key

skipEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_SKIP_TAGS

TASK_DEBUGGER_IGNORE_ERRORS

Description

This option defines whether the task debugger will be invoked on a failed task when ignore_errors=True is specified. True specifies that the debugger will honor ignore_errors, False will not honor ignore_errors.Type

booleanDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.7IniSection

[defaults]Key

task_debugger_ignore_errorsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TASK_DEBUGGER_IGNORE_ERRORS

TASK_TIMEOUT

Description

Set the maximum time (in seconds) that a task can run for. If set to 0 (the default) there is no timeout.Type

integerDefault

0Version Added

2.10IniSection

[defaults]Key

task_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TASK_TIMEOUT

TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARS

Description

Make ansible transform invalid characters in group names supplied by inventory sources. If ‘never’ it will allow for the group name but warn about the issue. When ‘ignore’, it does the same as ‘never’, without issuing a warning. When ‘always’ it will replace any invalid characters with ‘_’ (underscore) and warn the user When ‘silently’, it does the same as ‘always’, without issuing a warning.Type

stringDefault

neverChoices

• always
• never
• ignore
• silently

Version Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

force_valid_group_namesEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARS

USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

Description

Toggles the use of persistence for connections.Type

booleanDefault

FalseIniSection

[defaults]Key

use_persistent_connectionsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

VALIDATE_ACTION_GROUP_METADATA

Description

A toggle to disable validating a collection’s ‘metadata’ entry for a module_defaults action group. Metadata containing unexpected fields or value types will produce a warning when this is True.Type

boolDefault

TrueVersion Added

2.12IniSection

[defaults]Key

validate_action_group_metadataEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VALIDATE_ACTION_GROUP_METADATA

VARIABLE_PLUGINS_ENABLED

Description

Whitelist for variable plugins that require it.Type

listDefault

['host_group_vars']Version Added

2.10IniSection

[defaults]Key

vars_plugins_enabledEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VARS_ENABLED

VARIABLE_PRECEDENCE

Description

Allows to change the group variable precedence merge order.Type

listDefault

['all_inventory', 'groups_inventory', 'all_plugins_inventory', 'all_plugins_play', 'groups_plugins_inventory', 'groups_plugins_play']Version Added

2.4IniSection

[defaults]Key

precedenceEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_PRECEDENCE

VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

Description

Force ‘verbose’ option to use stderr instead of stdoutType

boolDefault

FalseVersion Added

2.8IniSection

[defaults]Key

verbose_to_stderrEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

WIN_ASYNC_STARTUP_TIMEOUT

Description

For asynchronous tasks in Ansible (covered in Asynchronous Actions and Polling), this is how long, in seconds, to wait for the task spawned by Ansible to connect back to the named pipe used on Windows systems. The default is 5 seconds. This can be too low on slower systems, or systems under heavy load. This is not the total time an async command can run for, but is a separate timeout to wait for an async command to start. The task will only start to be timed against its async_timeout once it has connected to the pipe, so the overall maximum duration the task can take will be extended by the amount specified here.Type

integerDefault

5Version Added

2.10IniSection

[defaults]Key

win_async_startup_timeoutEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_WIN_ASYNC_STARTUP_TIMEOUTVariablesname

ansible_win_async_startup_timeout

WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_COUNT

Description

The maximum number of times to check Task Queue Manager worker processes to verify they have exited cleanly. After this limit is reached any worker processes still running will be terminated. This is for internal use only.Type

integerDefault

0Version Added

2.10EnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_COUNT

WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_DELAY

Description

The number of seconds to sleep between polling loops when checking Task Queue Manager worker processes to verify they have exited cleanly. This is for internal use only.Type

floatDefault

0.1Version Added

2.10EnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_DELAY

YAML_FILENAME_EXTENSIONS

Description

Check all of these extensions when looking for ‘variable’ files which should be YAML or JSON or vaulted versions of these. This affects vars_files, include_vars, inventory and vars plugins among others.Type

listDefault

['.yml', '.yaml', '.json']IniSection

[defaults]Key

yaml_valid_extensionsEnvironmentVariable

ANSIBLE_YAML_FILENAME_EXT

Environment Variables

ANSIBLE_CONFIG

Override the default ansible config fileANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PATH

Specify where to look for the ansible-connection script. This location will be checked before searching $PATH.If null, ansible will start with the same directory as the ansible script.

See also ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PATHANSIBLE_COW_SELECTION

This allows you to chose a specific cowsay stencil for the banners or use ‘random’ to cycle through them.

See also ANSIBLE_COW_SELECTIONANSIBLE_COW_WHITELIST

White list of cowsay templates that are ‘safe’ to use, set to empty list if you want to enable all installed templates.

See also ANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLISTDeprecated in

2.15Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLISTANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLIST

White list of cowsay templates that are ‘safe’ to use, set to empty list if you want to enable all installed templates.

See also ANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLISTVersion Added

2.11ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR

This option forces color mode even when running without a TTY or the “nocolor” setting is True.

See also ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLORANSIBLE_NOCOLOR

This setting allows suppressing colorizing output, which is used to give a better indication of failure and status information.

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOLORNO_COLOR

This setting allows suppressing colorizing output, which is used to give a better indication of failure and status information.

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOLORVersion Added

2.11ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

If you have cowsay installed but want to avoid the ‘cows’ (why????), use this.

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOWSANSIBLE_COW_PATH

Specify a custom cowsay path or swap in your cowsay implementation of choice

See also ANSIBLE_COW_PATHANSIBLE_PIPELINING

Pipelining, if supported by the connection plugin, reduces the number of network operations required to execute a module on the remote server, by executing many Ansible modules without actual file transfer.This can result in a very significant performance improvement when enabled.However this conflicts with privilege escalation (become). For example, when using ‘sudo:’ operations you must first disable ‘requiretty’ in /etc/sudoers on all managed hosts, which is why it is disabled by default.This option is disabled if ANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES is enabled.This is a global option, each connection plugin can override either by having more specific options or not supporting pipelining at all.

See also ANSIBLE_PIPELININGANSIBLE_ANY_ERRORS_FATAL

Sets the default value for the any_errors_fatal keyword, if True, Task failures will be considered fatal errors.

See also ANY_ERRORS_FATALANSIBLE_BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USER

This setting controls if become is skipped when remote user and become user are the same. I.E root sudo to root.If executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.

See also BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USERANSIBLE_BECOME_PASSWORD_FILE

The password file to use for the become plugin. –become-password-file.If executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.

See also BECOME_PASSWORD_FILEANSIBLE_AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

Display an agnostic become prompt instead of displaying a prompt containing the command line supplied become method

See also AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPTANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN

Chooses which cache plugin to use, the default ‘memory’ is ephemeral.

See also CACHE_PLUGINANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Defines connection or path information for the cache plugin

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTIONANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Prefix to use for cache plugin files/tables

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIXANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

Expiration timeout for the cache plugin data

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

A boolean to enable or disable scanning the sys.path for installed collections

See also COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATHANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATHS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for collections content. Collections must be in nested subdirectories, not directly in these directories. For example, if COLLECTIONS_PATHS includes ~/.ansible/collections, and you want to add my.collection to that directory, it must be saved as ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/my/collection.

See also COLLECTIONS_PATHSANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATH

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for collections content. Collections must be in nested subdirectories, not directly in these directories. For example, if COLLECTIONS_PATHS includes ~/.ansible/collections, and you want to add my.collection to that directory, it must be saved as ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/my/collection.

See also COLLECTIONS_PATHSVersion Added

2.10ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_ON_ANSIBLE_VERSION_MISMATCH

When a collection is loaded that does not support the running Ansible version (via the collection metadata key requires_ansible), the default behavior is to issue a warning and continue anyway. Setting this value to ignore skips the warning entirely, while setting it to fatal will immediately halt Ansible execution.

See also COLLECTIONS_ON_ANSIBLE_VERSION_MISMATCHANSIBLE_COLOR_CHANGED

Defines the color to use on ‘Changed’ task status

See also COLOR_CHANGEDANSIBLE_COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

Defines the default color to use for ansible-console

See also COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPTANSIBLE_COLOR_DEBUG

Defines the color to use when emitting debug messages

See also COLOR_DEBUGANSIBLE_COLOR_DEPRECATE

Defines the color to use when emitting deprecation messages

See also COLOR_DEPRECATEANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_ADD

Defines the color to use when showing added lines in diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_ADDANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_LINES

Defines the color to use when showing diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_LINESANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

Defines the color to use when showing removed lines in diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_REMOVEANSIBLE_COLOR_ERROR

Defines the color to use when emitting error messages

See also COLOR_ERRORANSIBLE_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

Defines the color to use for highlighting

See also COLOR_HIGHLIGHTANSIBLE_COLOR_OK

Defines the color to use when showing ‘OK’ task status

See also COLOR_OKANSIBLE_COLOR_SKIP

Defines the color to use when showing ‘Skipped’ task status

See also COLOR_SKIPANSIBLE_COLOR_UNREACHABLE

Defines the color to use on ‘Unreachable’ status

See also COLOR_UNREACHABLEANSIBLE_COLOR_VERBOSE

Defines the color to use when emitting verbose messages. i.e those that show with ‘-v’s.

See also COLOR_VERBOSEANSIBLE_COLOR_WARN

Defines the color to use when emitting warning messages

See also COLOR_WARNANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PASSWORD_FILE

The password file to use for the connection plugin. –connection-password-file.

See also CONNECTION_PASSWORD_FILE_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_OUTPUT

Sets the output directory on the remote host to generate coverage reports to.Currently only used for remote coverage on PowerShell modules.This is for internal use only.

See also COVERAGE_REMOTE_OUTPUT_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_PATH_FILTER

A list of paths for files on the Ansible controller to run coverage for when executing on the remote host.Only files that match the path glob will have its coverage collected.Multiple path globs can be specified and are separated by :.Currently only used for remote coverage on PowerShell modules.This is for internal use only.

See also COVERAGE_REMOTE_PATHSANSIBLE_ACTION_WARNINGS

By default Ansible will issue a warning when received from a task action (module or action plugin)These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.

See also ACTION_WARNINGSANSIBLE_COMMAND_WARNINGS

Ansible can issue a warning when the shell or command module is used and the command appears to be similar to an existing Ansible module.These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False. You can also control this at the task level with the module option warn.As of version 2.11, this is disabled by default.

See also COMMAND_WARNINGSANSIBLE_LOCALHOST_WARNING

By default Ansible will issue a warning when there are no hosts in the inventory.These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.

See also LOCALHOST_WARNINGANSIBLE_DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Documentation Fragments Plugins.

See also DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_ACTION_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Action Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_ACTION_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_ASK_PASS

This controls whether an Ansible playbook should prompt for a login password. If using SSH keys for authentication, you probably do not needed to change this setting.

See also DEFAULT_ASK_PASSANSIBLE_ASK_VAULT_PASS

This controls whether an Ansible playbook should prompt for a vault password.

See also DEFAULT_ASK_VAULT_PASSANSIBLE_BECOME

Toggles the use of privilege escalation, allowing you to ‘become’ another user after login.

See also DEFAULT_BECOMEANSIBLE_BECOME_ASK_PASS

Toggle to prompt for privilege escalation password.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_ASK_PASSANSIBLE_BECOME_METHOD

Privilege escalation method to use when become is enabled.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_METHODANSIBLE_BECOME_EXE

executable to use for privilege escalation, otherwise Ansible will depend on PATH

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_EXEANSIBLE_BECOME_FLAGS

Flags to pass to the privilege escalation executable.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_FLAGSANSIBLE_BECOME_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Become Plugins.

See also BECOME_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_BECOME_USER

The user your login/remote user ‘becomes’ when using privilege escalation, most systems will use ‘root’ when no user is specified.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_USERANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Cache Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_CACHE_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_CALLABLE_WHITELIST

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluation

See also CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LISTDeprecated in

2.15Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLEDANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLED

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluation

See also CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LISTVersion Added

2.11ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Callback Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_CALLBACK_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_CALLBACK_WHITELIST

List of enabled callbacks, not all callbacks need enabling, but many of those shipped with Ansible do as we don’t want them activated by default.

See also CALLBACKS_ENABLEDDeprecated in

2.15Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standardDeprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLEDANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLED

List of enabled callbacks, not all callbacks need enabling, but many of those shipped with Ansible do as we don’t want them activated by default.

See also CALLBACKS_ENABLEDVersion Added

2.11ANSIBLE_CLICONF_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Cliconf Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_CLICONF_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Connection Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_CONNECTION_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_DEBUG

Toggles debug output in Ansible. This is very verbose and can hinder multiprocessing. Debug output can also include secret information despite no_log settings being enabled, which means debug mode should not be used in production.

See also DEFAULT_DEBUGANSIBLE_EXECUTABLE

This indicates the command to use to spawn a shell under for Ansible’s execution needs on a target. Users may need to change this in rare instances when shell usage is constrained, but in most cases it may be left as is.

See also DEFAULT_EXECUTABLEANSIBLE_FACT_PATH

This option allows you to globally configure a custom path for ‘local_facts’ for the implied M(ansible.builtin.setup) task when using fact gathering.If not set, it will fallback to the default from the M(ansible.builtin.setup) module: /etc/ansible/facts.d.This does not affect user defined tasks that use the M(ansible.builtin.setup) module.

See also DEFAULT_FACT_PATHANSIBLE_FILTER_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Jinja2 Filter Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_FILTER_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_FORCE_HANDLERS

This option controls if notified handlers run on a host even if a failure occurs on that host.When false, the handlers will not run if a failure has occurred on a host.This can also be set per play or on the command line. See Handlers and Failure for more details.

See also DEFAULT_FORCE_HANDLERSANSIBLE_FORKS

Maximum number of forks Ansible will use to execute tasks on target hosts.

See also DEFAULT_FORKSANSIBLE_GATHERING

This setting controls the default policy of fact gathering (facts discovered about remote systems).When ‘implicit’ (the default), the cache plugin will be ignored and facts will be gathered per play unless ‘gather_facts: False’ is set.When ‘explicit’ the inverse is true, facts will not be gathered unless directly requested in the play.The ‘smart’ value means each new host that has no facts discovered will be scanned, but if the same host is addressed in multiple plays it will not be contacted again in the playbook run.This option can be useful for those wishing to save fact gathering time. Both ‘smart’ and ‘explicit’ will use the cache plugin.

See also DEFAULT_GATHERINGANSIBLE_GATHER_SUBSET

Set the gather_subset option for the M(ansible.builtin.setup) task in the implicit fact gathering. See the module documentation for specifics.It does not apply to user defined M(ansible.builtin.setup) tasks.

See also DEFAULT_GATHER_SUBSETANSIBLE_GATHER_TIMEOUT

Set the timeout in seconds for the implicit fact gathering.It does not apply to user defined M(ansible.builtin.setup) tasks.

See also DEFAULT_GATHER_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_HASH_BEHAVIOUR

This setting controls how duplicate definitions of dictionary variables (aka hash, map, associative array) are handled in Ansible.This does not affect variables whose values are scalars (integers, strings) or arrays.**WARNING**, changing this setting is not recommended as this is fragile and makes your content (plays, roles, collections) non portable, leading to continual confusion and misuse. Don’t change this setting unless you think you have an absolute need for it.We recommend avoiding reusing variable names and relying on the combine filter and vars and varnames lookups to create merged versions of the individual variables. In our experience this is rarely really needed and a sign that too much complexity has been introduced into the data structures and plays.For some uses you can also look into custom vars_plugins to merge on input, even substituting the default host_group_vars that is in charge of parsing the host_vars/ and group_vars/ directories. Most users of this setting are only interested in inventory scope, but the setting itself affects all sources and makes debugging even harder.All playbooks and roles in the official examples repos assume the default for this setting.Changing the setting to merge applies across variable sources, but many sources will internally still overwrite the variables. For example include_vars will dedupe variables internally before updating Ansible, with ‘last defined’ overwriting previous definitions in same file.The Ansible project recommends you avoid “merge“ for new projects.**It is the intention of the Ansible developers to eventually deprecate and remove this setting, but it is being kept as some users do heavily rely on it. New projects should **avoid ‘merge’.

See also DEFAULT_HASH_BEHAVIOURANSIBLE_INVENTORY

Comma separated list of Ansible inventory sources

See also DEFAULT_HOST_LISTANSIBLE_HTTPAPI_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for HttpApi Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_HTTPAPI_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_INVENTORY_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Inventory Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_INVENTORY_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_JINJA2_EXTENSIONS

This is a developer-specific feature that allows enabling additional Jinja2 extensions.See the Jinja2 documentation for details. If you do not know what these do, you probably don’t need to change this setting 🙂

See also DEFAULT_JINJA2_EXTENSIONSANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE

This option preserves variable types during template operations. This requires Jinja2 >= 2.10.

See also DEFAULT_JINJA2_NATIVEANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES

Enables/disables the cleaning up of the temporary files Ansible used to execute the tasks on the remote.If this option is enabled it will disable ANSIBLE_PIPELINING.

See also DEFAULT_KEEP_REMOTE_FILESLIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL

This setting causes libvirt to connect to lxc containers by passing –noseclabel to virsh. This is necessary when running on systems which do not have SELinux.

See also DEFAULT_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABELDeprecated in

2.12Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL environment variableANSIBLE_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL

This setting causes libvirt to connect to lxc containers by passing –noseclabel to virsh. This is necessary when running on systems which do not have SELinux.

See also DEFAULT_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABELANSIBLE_LOAD_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

Controls whether callback plugins are loaded when running /usr/bin/ansible. This may be used to log activity from the command line, send notifications, and so on. Callback plugins are always loaded for ansible-playbook.

See also DEFAULT_LOAD_CALLBACK_PLUGINSANSIBLE_LOCAL_TEMP

Temporary directory for Ansible to use on the controller.

See also DEFAULT_LOCAL_TMPANSIBLE_LOG_PATH

File to which Ansible will log on the controller. When empty logging is disabled.

See also DEFAULT_LOG_PATHANSIBLE_LOG_FILTER

List of logger names to filter out of the log file

See also DEFAULT_LOG_FILTERANSIBLE_LOOKUP_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Lookup Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_LOOKUP_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS

This sets the default arguments to pass to the ansible adhoc binary if no -a is specified.

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_ARGSANSIBLE_LIBRARY

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Modules.

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_PATHANSIBLE_MODULE_UTILS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Module utils files, which are shared by modules.

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_UTILS_PATHANSIBLE_NETCONF_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Netconf Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_NETCONF_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_NO_LOG

Toggle Ansible’s display and logging of task details, mainly used to avoid security disclosures.

See also DEFAULT_NO_LOGANSIBLE_NO_TARGET_SYSLOG

Toggle Ansible logging to syslog on the target when it executes tasks. On Windows hosts this will disable a newer style PowerShell modules from writting to the event log.

See also DEFAULT_NO_TARGET_SYSLOGANSIBLE_NULL_REPRESENTATION

What templating should return as a ‘null’ value. When not set it will let Jinja2 decide.

See also DEFAULT_NULL_REPRESENTATIONANSIBLE_POLL_INTERVAL

For asynchronous tasks in Ansible (covered in Asynchronous Actions and Polling), this is how often to check back on the status of those tasks when an explicit poll interval is not supplied. The default is a reasonably moderate 15 seconds which is a tradeoff between checking in frequently and providing a quick turnaround when something may have completed.

See also DEFAULT_POLL_INTERVALANSIBLE_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE

Option for connections using a certificate or key file to authenticate, rather than an agent or passwords, you can set the default value here to avoid re-specifying –private-key with every invocation.

See also DEFAULT_PRIVATE_KEY_FILEANSIBLE_PRIVATE_ROLE_VARS

Makes role variables inaccessible from other roles.This was introduced as a way to reset role variables to default values if a role is used more than once in a playbook.

See also DEFAULT_PRIVATE_ROLE_VARSANSIBLE_REMOTE_PORT

Port to use in remote connections, when blank it will use the connection plugin default.

See also DEFAULT_REMOTE_PORTANSIBLE_REMOTE_USER

Sets the login user for the target machinesWhen blank it uses the connection plugin’s default, normally the user currently executing Ansible.

See also DEFAULT_REMOTE_USERANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Roles.

See also DEFAULT_ROLES_PATHANSIBLE_SELINUX_SPECIAL_FS

Some filesystems do not support safe operations and/or return inconsistent errors, this setting makes Ansible ‘tolerate’ those in the list w/o causing fatal errors.Data corruption may occur and writes are not always verified when a filesystem is in the list.

See also DEFAULT_SELINUX_SPECIAL_FSVersion Added

2.9ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK

Set the main callback used to display Ansible output, you can only have one at a time.You can have many other callbacks, but just one can be in charge of stdout.

See also DEFAULT_STDOUT_CALLBACKANSIBLE_ENABLE_TASK_DEBUGGER

Whether or not to enable the task debugger, this previously was done as a strategy plugin.Now all strategy plugins can inherit this behavior. The debugger defaults to activating whena task is failed on unreachable. Use the debugger keyword for more flexibility.

See also ENABLE_TASK_DEBUGGERANSIBLE_TASK_DEBUGGER_IGNORE_ERRORS

This option defines whether the task debugger will be invoked on a failed task when ignore_errors=True is specified.True specifies that the debugger will honor ignore_errors, False will not honor ignore_errors.

See also TASK_DEBUGGER_IGNORE_ERRORSANSIBLE_STRATEGY

Set the default strategy used for plays.

See also DEFAULT_STRATEGYANSIBLE_STRATEGY_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Strategy Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_STRATEGY_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_SU

Toggle the use of “su” for tasks.

See also DEFAULT_SUANSIBLE_SYSLOG_FACILITY

Syslog facility to use when Ansible logs to the remote target

See also DEFAULT_SYSLOG_FACILITYANSIBLE_TERMINAL_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Terminal Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_TERMINAL_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_TEST_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Jinja2 Test Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_TEST_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_TIMEOUT

This is the default timeout for connection plugins to use.

See also DEFAULT_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_TRANSPORT

Default connection plugin to use, the ‘smart’ option will toggle between ‘ssh’ and ‘paramiko’ depending on controller OS and ssh versions

See also DEFAULT_TRANSPORTANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_UNDEFINED_VARS

When True, this causes ansible templating to fail steps that reference variable names that are likely typoed.Otherwise, any ‘{{ template_expression }}’ that contains undefined variables will be rendered in a template or ansible action line exactly as written.

See also DEFAULT_UNDEFINED_VAR_BEHAVIORANSIBLE_VARS_PLUGINS

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Vars Plugins.

See also DEFAULT_VARS_PLUGIN_PATHANSIBLE_VAULT_ID_MATCH

If true, decrypting vaults with a vault id will only try the password from the matching vault-id

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_ID_MATCHANSIBLE_VAULT_IDENTITY

The label to use for the default vault id label in cases where a vault id label is not provided

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_IDENTITYANSIBLE_VAULT_ENCRYPT_IDENTITY

The vault_id to use for encrypting by default. If multiple vault_ids are provided, this specifies which to use for encryption. The –encrypt-vault-id cli option overrides the configured value.

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_ENCRYPT_IDENTITYANSIBLE_VAULT_IDENTITY_LIST

A list of vault-ids to use by default. Equivalent to multiple –vault-id args. Vault-ids are tried in order.

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_IDENTITY_LISTANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

The vault password file to use. Equivalent to –vault-password-file or –vault-idIf executable, it will be run and the resulting stdout will be used as the password.

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILEANSIBLE_VERBOSITY

Sets the default verbosity, equivalent to the number of -v passed in the command line.

See also DEFAULT_VERBOSITYANSIBLE_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

Toggle to control the showing of deprecation warnings

See also DEPRECATION_WARNINGSANSIBLE_DEVEL_WARNING

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running devel

See also DEVEL_WARNINGANSIBLE_DIFF_ALWAYS

Configuration toggle to tell modules to show differences when in ‘changed’ status, equivalent to --diff.

See also DIFF_ALWAYSANSIBLE_DIFF_CONTEXT

How many lines of context to show when displaying the differences between files.

See also DIFF_CONTEXTANSIBLE_DISPLAY_ARGS_TO_STDOUT

Normally ansible-playbook will print a header for each task that is run. These headers will contain the name: field from the task if you specified one. If you didn’t then ansible-playbook uses the task’s action to help you tell which task is presently running. Sometimes you run many of the same action and so you want more information about the task to differentiate it from others of the same action. If you set this variable to True in the config then ansible-playbook will also include the task’s arguments in the header.This setting defaults to False because there is a chance that you have sensitive values in your parameters and you do not want those to be printed.If you set this to True you should be sure that you have secured your environment’s stdout (no one can shoulder surf your screen and you aren’t saving stdout to an insecure file) or made sure that all of your playbooks explicitly added the no_log: True parameter to tasks which have sensitive values See How do I keep secret data in my playbook? for more information.

See also DISPLAY_ARGS_TO_STDOUTDISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

Toggle to control displaying skipped task/host entries in a task in the default callback

See also DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTSDeprecated in

2.12Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS environment variableANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

Toggle to control displaying skipped task/host entries in a task in the default callback

See also DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTSANSIBLE_DUPLICATE_YAML_DICT_KEY

By default Ansible will issue a warning when a duplicate dict key is encountered in YAML.These warnings can be silenced by adjusting this setting to False.

See also DUPLICATE_YAML_DICT_KEYANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLER

Toggle to allow missing handlers to become a warning instead of an error when notifying.

See also ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLERANSIBLE_FACTS_MODULES

Which modules to run during a play’s fact gathering stage, using the default of ‘smart’ will try to figure it out based on connection type.

See also FACTS_MODULESANSIBLE_GALAXY_IGNORE

If set to yes, ansible-galaxy will not validate TLS certificates. This can be useful for testing against a server with a self-signed certificate.

See also GALAXY_IGNORE_CERTSANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON

Role or collection skeleton directory to use as a template for the init action in ansible-galaxy, same as --role-skeleton.

See also GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETONANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

patterns of files to ignore inside a Galaxy role or collection skeleton directory

See also GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNOREANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER

URL to prepend when roles don’t specify the full URI, assume they are referencing this server as the source.

See also GALAXY_SERVERANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_LIST

A list of Galaxy servers to use when installing a collection.The value corresponds to the config ini header [galaxy_server.{{item}}] which defines the server details.See Configuring the ansible-galaxy client for more details on how to define a Galaxy server.The order of servers in this list is used to as the order in which a collection is resolved.Setting this config option will ignore the GALAXY_SERVER config option.

See also GALAXY_SERVER_LISTANSIBLE_GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

Local path to galaxy access token file

See also GALAXY_TOKEN_PATHANSIBLE_GALAXY_DISPLAY_PROGRESS

Some steps in ansible-galaxy display a progress wheel which can cause issues on certain displays or when outputing the stdout to a file.This config option controls whether the display wheel is shown or not.The default is to show the display wheel if stdout has a tty.

See also GALAXY_DISPLAY_PROGRESSANSIBLE_GALAXY_CACHE_DIR

The directory that stores cached responses from a Galaxy server.This is only used by the ansible-galaxy collection install and download commands.Cache files inside this dir will be ignored if they are world writable.

See also GALAXY_CACHE_DIRANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING

Set this to “False” if you want to avoid host key checking by the underlying tools Ansible uses to connect to the host

See also HOST_KEY_CHECKINGANSIBLE_HOST_PATTERN_MISMATCH

This setting changes the behaviour of mismatched host patterns, it allows you to force a fatal error, a warning or just ignore it

See also HOST_PATTERN_MISMATCHANSIBLE_PYTHON_INTERPRETER

Path to the Python interpreter to be used for module execution on remote targets, or an automatic discovery mode. Supported discovery modes are auto (the default), auto_silent, auto_legacy, and auto_legacy_silent. All discovery modes employ a lookup table to use the included system Python (on distributions known to include one), falling back to a fixed ordered list of well-known Python interpreter locations if a platform-specific default is not available. The fallback behavior will issue a warning that the interpreter should be set explicitly (since interpreters installed later may change which one is used). This warning behavior can be disabled by setting auto_silent or auto_legacy_silent. The value of auto_legacy provides all the same behavior, but for backwards-compatibility with older Ansible releases that always defaulted to /usr/bin/python, will use that interpreter if present.

See also INTERPRETER_PYTHONANSIBLE_TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARS

Make ansible transform invalid characters in group names supplied by inventory sources.If ‘never’ it will allow for the group name but warn about the issue.When ‘ignore’, it does the same as ‘never’, without issuing a warning.When ‘always’ it will replace any invalid characters with ‘_’ (underscore) and warn the userWhen ‘silently’, it does the same as ‘always’, without issuing a warning.

See also TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARSANSIBLE_INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

If ‘false’, invalid attributes for a task will result in warnings instead of errors

See also INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILEDANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ANY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILED

If ‘true’, it is a fatal error when any given inventory source cannot be successfully parsed by any available inventory plugin; otherwise, this situation only attracts a warning.

See also INVENTORY_ANY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILEDANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE

Toggle to turn on inventory caching.This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins.The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory configuration.This message will be removed in 2.16.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_ENABLEDANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

The plugin for caching inventory.This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins.The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration.This message will be removed in 2.16.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGINANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_CONNECTION

The inventory cache connection.This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins.The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration.This message will be removed in 2.16.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTIONANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

The table prefix for the cache plugin.This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins.The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration.This message will be removed in 2.16.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIXANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Expiration timeout for the inventory cache plugin data.This setting has been moved to the individual inventory plugins as a plugin option Inventory plugins.The existing configuration settings are still accepted with the inventory plugin adding additional options from inventory and fact cache configuration.This message will be removed in 2.16.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ENABLED

List of enabled inventory plugins, it also determines the order in which they are used.

See also INVENTORY_ENABLEDANSIBLE_INVENTORY_EXPORT

Controls if ansible-inventory will accurately reflect Ansible’s view into inventory or its optimized for exporting.

See also INVENTORY_EXPORTANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE

List of extensions to ignore when using a directory as an inventory source

See also INVENTORY_IGNORE_EXTSANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE_REGEX

List of patterns to ignore when using a directory as an inventory source

See also INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERNSANSIBLE_INVENTORY_UNPARSED_FAILED

If ‘true’ it is a fatal error if every single potential inventory source fails to parse, otherwise this situation will only attract a warning.

See also INVENTORY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILEDANSIBLE_MAX_DIFF_SIZE

Maximum size of files to be considered for diff display

See also MAX_FILE_SIZE_FOR_DIFFANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE_WARNING

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running a Jinja version older than required for jinja2_native

See also JINJA2_NATIVE_WARNINGNETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

See also NETWORK_GROUP_MODULESDeprecated in

2.12Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecatedDeprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES environment variableANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

See also NETWORK_GROUP_MODULESANSIBLE_INJECT_FACT_VARS

Facts are available inside the ansible_facts variable, this setting also pushes them as their own vars in the main namespace.Unlike inside the ansible_facts dictionary, these will have an ansible_ prefix.

See also INJECT_FACTS_AS_VARSANSIBLE_MODULE_IGNORE_EXTS

List of extensions to ignore when looking for modules to loadThis is for rejecting script and binary module fallback extensions

See also MODULE_IGNORE_EXTSANSIBLE_OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEAR

Previously Ansible would only clear some of the plugin loading caches when loading new roles, this led to some behaviours in which a plugin loaded in prevoius plays would be unexpectedly ‘sticky’. This setting allows to return to that behaviour.

See also OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEARINGANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

See also PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADDANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

See also PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYSANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

Path to socket to be used by the connection persistence system.

See also PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIRANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

This controls how long the persistent connection will remain idle before it is destroyed.

See also PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

This controls the retry timeout for persistent connection to connect to the local domain socket.

See also PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_COMMAND_TIMEOUT

This controls the amount of time to wait for response from remote device before timing out persistent connection.

See also PERSISTENT_COMMAND_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_PLAYBOOK_DIR

A number of non-playbook CLIs have a --playbook-dir argument; this sets the default value for it.

See also PLAYBOOK_DIRANSIBLE_PLAYBOOK_VARS_ROOT

This sets which playbook dirs will be used as a root to process vars plugins, which includes finding host_vars/group_varsThe top option follows the traditional behaviour of using the top playbook in the chain to find the root directory.The bottom option follows the 2.4.0 behaviour of using the current playbook to find the root directory.The all option examines from the first parent to the current playbook.

See also PLAYBOOK_VARS_ROOTANSIBLE_PYTHON_MODULE_RLIMIT_NOFILE

Attempts to set RLIMIT_NOFILE soft limit to the specified value when executing Python modules (can speed up subprocess usage on Python 2.x. See https://bugs.python.org/issue11284). The value will be limited by the existing hard limit. Default value of 0 does not attempt to adjust existing system-defined limits.

See also PYTHON_MODULE_RLIMIT_NOFILEANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

This controls whether a failed Ansible playbook should create a .retry file.

See also RETRY_FILES_ENABLEDANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_SAVE_PATH

This sets the path in which Ansible will save .retry files when a playbook fails and retry files are enabled.This file will be overwritten after each run with the list of failed hosts from all plays.

See also RETRY_FILES_SAVE_PATHANSIBLE_RUN_VARS_PLUGINS

This setting can be used to optimize vars_plugin usage depending on user’s inventory size and play selection.Setting to C(demand) will run vars_plugins relative to inventory sources anytime vars are ‘demanded’ by tasks.Setting to C(start) will run vars_plugins relative to inventory sources after importing that inventory source.

See also RUN_VARS_PLUGINSANSIBLE_SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

This adds the custom stats set via the set_stats plugin to the default output

See also SHOW_CUSTOM_STATSANSIBLE_STRING_TYPE_FILTERS

This list of filters avoids ‘type conversion’ when templating variablesUseful when you want to avoid conversion into lists or dictionaries for JSON strings, for example.

See also STRING_TYPE_FILTERSANSIBLE_SYSTEM_WARNINGS

Allows disabling of warnings related to potential issues on the system running ansible itself (not on the managed hosts)These may include warnings about 3rd party packages or other conditions that should be resolved if possible.

See also SYSTEM_WARNINGSANSIBLE_RUN_TAGS

default list of tags to run in your plays, Skip Tags has precedence.

See also TAGS_RUNANSIBLE_SKIP_TAGS

default list of tags to skip in your plays, has precedence over Run Tags

See also TAGS_SKIPANSIBLE_TASK_TIMEOUT

Set the maximum time (in seconds) that a task can run for.If set to 0 (the default) there is no timeout.

See also TASK_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_COUNT

The maximum number of times to check Task Queue Manager worker processes to verify they have exited cleanly.After this limit is reached any worker processes still running will be terminated.This is for internal use only.

See also WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_COUNTANSIBLE_WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_DELAY

The number of seconds to sleep between polling loops when checking Task Queue Manager worker processes to verify they have exited cleanly.This is for internal use only.

See also WORKER_SHUTDOWN_POLL_DELAYANSIBLE_USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

Toggles the use of persistence for connections.

See also USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONSANSIBLE_VARS_ENABLED

Whitelist for variable plugins that require it.

See also VARIABLE_PLUGINS_ENABLEDANSIBLE_PRECEDENCE

Allows to change the group variable precedence merge order.

See also VARIABLE_PRECEDENCEANSIBLE_WIN_ASYNC_STARTUP_TIMEOUT

For asynchronous tasks in Ansible (covered in Asynchronous Actions and Polling), this is how long, in seconds, to wait for the task spawned by Ansible to connect back to the named pipe used on Windows systems. The default is 5 seconds. This can be too low on slower systems, or systems under heavy load.This is not the total time an async command can run for, but is a separate timeout to wait for an async command to start. The task will only start to be timed against its async_timeout once it has connected to the pipe, so the overall maximum duration the task can take will be extended by the amount specified here.

See also WIN_ASYNC_STARTUP_TIMEOUTANSIBLE_YAML_FILENAME_EXT

Check all of these extensions when looking for ‘variable’ files which should be YAML or JSON or vaulted versions of these.This affects vars_files, include_vars, inventory and vars plugins among others.

See also YAML_FILENAME_EXTENSIONSANSIBLE_NETCONF_SSH_CONFIG

This variable is used to enable bastion/jump host with netconf connection. If set to True the bastion/jump host ssh settings should be present in ~/.ssh/config file, alternatively it can be set to custom ssh configuration file path to read the bastion/jump host settings.

See also NETCONF_SSH_CONFIGANSIBLE_STRING_CONVERSION_ACTION

Action to take when a module parameter value is converted to a string (this does not affect variables). For string parameters, values such as ‘1.00’, “[‘a’, ‘b’,]”, and ‘yes’, ‘y’, etc. will be converted by the YAML parser unless fully quoted.Valid options are ‘error’, ‘warn’, and ‘ignore’.Since 2.8, this option defaults to ‘warn’ but will change to ‘error’ in 2.12.

See also STRING_CONVERSION_ACTIONANSIBLE_VALIDATE_ACTION_GROUP_METADATA

A toggle to disable validating a collection’s ‘metadata’ entry for a module_defaults action group. Metadata containing unexpected fields or value types will produce a warning when this is True.

See also VALIDATE_ACTION_GROUP_METADATAANSIBLE_VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

Force ‘verbose’ option to use stderr instead of stdout

See also VERBOSE_TO_STDERR