Ansible Configuration Settings

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:

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

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

action_warnings

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_ACTION_WARNINGS

AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

agnostic_become_prompt

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Deprecated in

2.14

Deprecated detail

moved to shell plugins

Deprecated 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

path

Default

None

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[persistent_connection]

Key

ansible_connection_path

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[‘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]

    Key

    cow_whitelist

    Deprecated in

    2.15

    Deprecated detail

    normalizing names to new standard

    Deprecated alternatives

    cowsay_enabled_stencils

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    cowsay_enabled_stencils

    Version Added

    2.11

Environment

ANSIBLE_COW_PATH

Description

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

Type

string

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

cowpath

Environment
Variable

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

default

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

cow_selection

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

force_color

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

nocolor

Environment

ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

nocows

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
  • Section

    [connection]

    Key

    pipelining

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    pipelining

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.4

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

any_errors_fatal

Environment
Variable

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.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_allow_same_user

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USER

BECOME_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

become_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_PLUGINS

CACHE_PLUGIN

Description

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

Default

memory

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

fact_caching

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN

CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Description

Defines connection or path information for the cache plugin

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

fact_caching_connection

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Description

Prefix to use for cache plugin files/tables

Default

ansible_facts

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

fact_caching_prefix

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

Description

Expiration timeout for the cache plugin data

Type

integer

Default

86400

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

fact_caching_timeout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LIST

Description

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluation

Type

list

Default

[]

Ini
  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    callable_whitelist

    Deprecated in

    2.15

    Deprecated detail

    normalizing names to new standard

    Deprecated alternatives

    callable_enabled

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    callable_enabled

    Version Added

    2.11

Environment

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

list

Default

[]

Ini
  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    callback_whitelist

    Deprecated in

    2.15

    Deprecated detail

    normalizing names to new standard

    Deprecated alternatives

    callbacks_enabled

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    callbacks_enabled

    Version Added

    2.11

Environment

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

warning

Choices
  • error
  • warning
  • ignore
Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

collections_on_ansible_version_mismatch

Environment
Variable

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

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    collections_paths

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    collections_path

    Version Added

    2.10

Environment

COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

collections_scan_sys_path

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

COLOR_CHANGED

Description

Defines the color to use on ‘Changed’ task status

Default

yellow

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

changed

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CHANGED

COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

Description

Defines the default color to use for ansible-console

Default

white

Choices
  • 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

2.7

Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

console_prompt

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

COLOR_DEBUG

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting debug messages

Default

dark gray

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

debug

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEBUG

COLOR_DEPRECATE

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting deprecation messages

Default

purple

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

deprecate

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEPRECATE

COLOR_DIFF_ADD

Description

Defines the color to use when showing added lines in diffs

Default

green

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

diff_add

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_ADD

COLOR_DIFF_LINES

Description

Defines the color to use when showing diffs

Default

cyan

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

diff_lines

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_LINES

COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

Description

Defines the color to use when showing removed lines in diffs

Default

red

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

diff_remove

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

COLOR_ERROR

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting error messages

Default

red

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

error

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_ERROR

COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

Description

Defines the color to use for highlighting

Default

white

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

highlight

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

COLOR_OK

Description

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

Default

green

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

ok

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_OK

COLOR_SKIP

Description

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

Default

cyan

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

skip

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_SKIP

COLOR_UNREACHABLE

Description

Defines the color to use on ‘Unreachable’ status

Default

bright red

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

unreachable

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_UNREACHABLE

COLOR_VERBOSE

Description

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

Default

blue

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

verbose

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COLOR_VERBOSE

COLOR_WARN

Description

Defines the color to use when emitting warning messages

Default

bright purple

Choices
  • 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
Ini
Section

[colors]

Key

warn

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

1.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

command_warnings

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_COMMAND_WARNINGS

Deprecated in

2.14

Deprecated detail

the command warnings feature is being removed

CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS

Description

With this setting on (True), running conditional evaluation ‘var’ is treated differently than ‘var.subkey’ as the first is evaluated directly while the second goes through the Jinja2 parser. But ‘false’ strings in ‘var’ get evaluated as booleans. With this setting off they both evaluate the same but in cases in which ‘var’ was ‘false’ (a string) it won’t get evaluated as a boolean anymore. Currently this setting defaults to ‘True’ but will soon change to ‘False’ and the setting itself will be removed in the future. Expect that this setting eventually will be deprecated after 2.12

Type

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

conditional_bare_variables

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS

CONNECTION_FACTS_MODULES

Description

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

Type

dict

Default

{‘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’}

CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING

Description

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running a Python version older than Python 3.8 on the controller

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

controller_python_warning

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING

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

str

Version Added

2.9

Environment
Variable

_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_OUTPUT

Variables
name

_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

str

Default
Version Added

2.9

Environment
Variable

_ANSIBLE_COVERAGE_REMOTE_PATH_FILTER

DEFAULT_ACTION_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

action_plugins

Environment
Variable

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 backwards-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 late

Type

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.2.3

Ini
Section

[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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

ask_pass

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_ASK_PASS

DEFAULT_ASK_VAULT_PASS

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

ask_vault_pass

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_ASK_VAULT_PASS

DEFAULT_BECOME

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME

DEFAULT_BECOME_ASK_PASS

Description

Toggle to prompt for privilege escalation password.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_ask_pass

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_ASK_PASS

DEFAULT_BECOME_EXE

Description

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

Default

None

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_exe

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_EXE

DEFAULT_BECOME_FLAGS

Description

Flags to pass to the privilege escalation executable.

Default
Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_flags

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_FLAGS

DEFAULT_BECOME_METHOD

Description

Privilege escalation method to use when become is enabled.

Default

sudo

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_method

Environment
Variable

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

root

Ini
Section

[privilege_escalation]

Key

become_user

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_BECOME_USER

DEFAULT_CACHE_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

cache_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CALLBACK_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

callback_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CLICONF_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

cliconf_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_CLICONF_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_CONNECTION_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

connection_plugins

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

debug

Environment
Variable

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/sh

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

executable

Environment
Variable

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

string

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

fact_path

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_FACT_PATH

DEFAULT_FILTER_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

filter_plugins

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

1.9.1

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

force_handlers

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_FORCE_HANDLERS

DEFAULT_FORKS

Description

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

Type

integer

Default

5

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

forks

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[‘all’]

Version Added

2.1

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

gather_subset

Environment
Variable

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

integer

Default

10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

gather_timeout

Environment
Variable

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

implicit

Choices
  • smart
  • explicit
  • implicit
Version Added

1.6

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

gathering

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_GATHERING

DEFAULT_HANDLER_INCLUDES_STATIC

Description

Since 2.0 M(ansible.builtin.include) can be ‘dynamic’, this setting (if True) forces that if the include appears in a handlers section to be ‘static’.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

handler_includes_static

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_HANDLER_INCLUDES_STATIC

Deprecated in

2.12

Deprecated detail

include itself is deprecated and this setting will not matter in the future

Deprecated alternatives

none as its already built into the decision between include_tasks and import_tasks

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

string

Default

replace

Choices
  • replace

    Any variable that is defined more than once is overwritten using the order from variable precedence rules (highest wins).

  • merge

    Any dictionary variable will be recursively merged with new definitions across the different variable definition sources.

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

hash_behaviour

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_HASH_BEHAVIOUR

DEFAULT_HOST_LIST

Description

Comma separated list of Ansible inventory sources

Type

pathlist

Default

/etc/ansible/hosts

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

inventory

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY

DEFAULT_HTTPAPI_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

httpapi_plugins

Environment
Variable

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 <= 2.1

Type

float

Default

0.001

Version Added

2.2

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

internal_poll_interval

DEFAULT_INVENTORY_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

inventory_plugins

Environment
Variable

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

[]

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

jinja2_extensions

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_JINJA2_EXTENSIONS

DEFAULT_JINJA2_NATIVE

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.7

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

jinja2_native

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

keep_remote_files

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.1

Ini
Section

[selinux]

Key

libvirt_lxc_noseclabel

Environment

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

1.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

bin_ansible_callbacks

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_LOAD_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_LOCAL_TMP

Description

Temporary directory for Ansible to use on the controller.

Type

tmppath

Default

~/.ansible/tmp

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

local_tmp

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_LOCAL_TEMP

DEFAULT_LOG_FILTER

Description

List of logger names to filter out of the log file

Type

list

Default

[]

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

log_filter

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_LOG_FILTER

DEFAULT_LOG_PATH

Description

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

Type

path

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

log_path

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_LOG_PATH

DEFAULT_LOOKUP_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

lookup_plugins

Environment
Variable

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 managed

Ini
Section

[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
Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

module_args

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS

DEFAULT_MODULE_COMPRESSION

Description

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

Default

ZIP_DEFLATED

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

module_compression

DEFAULT_MODULE_NAME

Description

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

Default

command

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

module_name

DEFAULT_MODULE_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Modules.

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

library

Environment
Variable

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

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

module_utils

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_MODULE_UTILS

DEFAULT_NETCONF_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

netconf_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_NETCONF_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_NO_LOG

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

no_log

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

no_target_syslog

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_NO_TARGET_SYSLOG

Variables
name

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

none

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

null_representation

Environment
Variable

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

integer

Default

15

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

poll_interval

Environment
Variable

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

path

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

private_key_file

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

private_role_vars

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PRIVATE_ROLE_VARS

DEFAULT_REMOTE_PORT

Description

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

Type

integer

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

remote_port

Environment
Variable

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.

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

remote_user

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_REMOTE_USER

DEFAULT_ROLES_PATH

Description

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Roles.

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

roles_path

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

fuse, nfs, vboxsf, ramfs, 9p, vfat

Ini
Section

[selinux]

Key

special_context_filesystems

Environment
Variable

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

default

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

stdout_callback

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK

DEFAULT_STRATEGY

Description

Set the default strategy used for plays.

Default

linear

Version Added

2.3

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

strategy

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY

DEFAULT_STRATEGY_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

strategy_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_SU

Description

Toggle the use of “su” for tasks.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

su

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_SU

DEFAULT_SYSLOG_FACILITY

Description

Syslog facility to use when Ansible logs to the remote target

Default

LOG_USER

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

syslog_facility

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_SYSLOG_FACILITY

DEFAULT_TASK_INCLUDES_STATIC

Description

The include tasks can be static or dynamic, this toggles the default expected behaviour if autodetection fails and it is not explicitly set in task.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.1

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

task_includes_static

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_TASK_INCLUDES_STATIC

Deprecated in

2.12

Deprecated detail

include itself is deprecated and this setting will not matter in the future

Deprecated alternatives

None, as its already built into the decision between include_tasks and import_tasks

DEFAULT_TERMINAL_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

terminal_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_TERMINAL_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_TEST_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

test_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_TEST_PLUGINS

DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

Description

This is the default timeout for connection plugins to use.

Type

integer

Default

10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

timeout

Environment
Variable

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 versions

Default

smart

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

transport

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

1.3

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

error_on_undefined_vars

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_UNDEFINED_VARS

DEFAULT_VARS_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vars_plugins

Environment
Variable

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.

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vault_encrypt_identity

Environment
Variable

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-id

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vault_id_match

Environment
Variable

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 provided

Default

default

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vault_identity

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[]

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vault_identity_list

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_IDENTITY_LIST

DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

Description

The vault password file to use. Equivalent to –vault-password-file or –vault-id

Type

path

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vault_password_file

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

DEFAULT_VERBOSITY

Description

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

Type

integer

Default

0

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

verbosity

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY

DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

Description

Toggle to control the showing of deprecation warnings

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

deprecation_warnings

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

DEVEL_WARNING

Description

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running devel

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

devel_warning

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_DEVEL_WARNING

DIFF_ALWAYS

Description

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

Type

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[diff]

Key

always

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_DIFF_ALWAYS

DIFF_CONTEXT

Description

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

Type

integer

Default

3

Ini
Section

[diff]

Key

context

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.1

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

display_args_to_stdout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_ARGS_TO_STDOUT

DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

display_skipped_hosts

Environment

DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGIN_PATH

Description

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

Type

pathspec

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

doc_fragment_plugins

Environment
Variable

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

2.8

Ini
Section

[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

string

Default

warn

Choices
  • warn
  • error
  • ignore
Version Added

2.9

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

duplicate_dict_key

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

enable_task_debugger

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

error_on_missing_handler

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[‘smart’]

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

facts_modules

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_FACTS_MODULES

Variables
name

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

path

Default

~/.ansible/galaxy_cache

Version Added

2.11

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

cache_dir

Environment
Variable

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

bool

Default

None

Version Added

2.10

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

display_progress

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

ignore_certs

Environment
Variable

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

path

Default

None

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

role_skeleton

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON

GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

Description

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

Type

list

Default

[‘^.git$’, ‘^.*/.git_keep$’]

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

role_skeleton_ignore

Environment
Variable

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.com

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

server

Environment
Variable

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

list

Version Added

2.9

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

server_list

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_LIST

GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

Description

Local path to galaxy access token file

Type

path

Default

~/.ansible/galaxy_token

Version Added

2.9

Ini
Section

[galaxy]

Key

token_path

Environment
Variable

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 host

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

host_key_checking

Environment
Variable

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 it

Default

warning

Choices
  • warning
  • error
  • ignore
Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

host_pattern_mismatch

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

inject_facts_as_vars

Environment
Variable

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, auto_silent, and auto_legacy (the default). 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. The default 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 (and issue a warning that the default behavior will change to that of auto in a future Ansible release.

Default

auto_legacy

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

interpreter_python

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PYTHON_INTERPRETER

Variables
name

ansible_python_interpreter

INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP

Default

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

Version Added

2.8

INTERPRETER_PYTHON_FALLBACK

Default

[‘/usr/bin/python’, ‘python3.9’, ‘python3.8’, ‘python3.7’, ‘python3.6’, ‘python3.5’, ‘python2.7’, ‘python2.6’, ‘/usr/libexec/platform-python’, ‘/usr/bin/python3’, ‘python’]

Version Added

2.8

INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

Description

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

Type

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.7

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

invalid_task_attribute_failed

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.7

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

any_unparsed_is_failed

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ANY_UNPARSED_IS_FAILED

INVENTORY_CACHE_ENABLED

Description

Toggle to turn on inventory caching

Type

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

cache

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

Description

The plugin for caching inventory. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN can be used instead.

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

cache_plugin

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Description

The inventory cache connection. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION can be used instead.

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

cache_connection

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_CONNECTION

INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Description

The table prefix for the cache plugin. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX can be used instead.

Default

ansible_facts

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

cache_prefix

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Description

Expiration timeout for the inventory cache plugin data. If INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT is not provided CACHE_TIMEOUT can be used instead.

Default

3600

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

cache_timeout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

INVENTORY_ENABLED

Description

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

Type

list

Default

[‘host_list’, ‘script’, ‘auto’, ‘yaml’, ‘ini’, ‘toml’]

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

enable_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ENABLED

INVENTORY_EXPORT

Description

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

Type

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

export

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_EXPORT

INVENTORY_IGNORE_EXTS

Description

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

Type

list

Default

{{(REJECT_EXTS + (‘.orig’, ‘.ini’, ‘.cfg’, ‘.retry’))}}

Ini
  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    inventory_ignore_extensions

  • Section

    [inventory]

    Key

    ignore_extensions

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE

INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERNS

Description

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

Type

list

Default

[]

Ini
  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    inventory_ignore_patterns

  • Section

    [inventory]

    Key

    ignore_patterns

Environment
Variable

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

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[inventory]

Key

unparsed_is_failed

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_UNPARSED_FAILED

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

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.6

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

localhost_warning

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_LOCALHOST_WARNING

MAX_FILE_SIZE_FOR_DIFF

Description

Maximum size of files to be considered for diff display

Type

int

Default

104448

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

max_diff_size

Environment
Variable

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 extensions

Type

list

Default

{{(REJECT_EXTS + (‘.yaml’, ‘.yml’, ‘.ini’))}}

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

module_ignore_exts

Environment
Variable

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

None

Ini
Section

[netconf_connection]

Key

ssh_config

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_NETCONF_SSH_CONFIG

NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

Type

list

Default

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

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

network_group_modules

Environment

OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEARING

Description

Previouslly 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

boolean

Default

False

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

old_plugin_cache_clear

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEAR

PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[paramiko_connection]

Key

host_key_auto_add

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

Type

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[paramiko_connection]

Key

look_for_keys

Environment
Variable

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

int

Default

30

Ini
Section

[persistent_connection]

Key

command_timeout

Environment
Variable

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

integer

Default

15

Ini
Section

[persistent_connection]

Key

connect_retry_timeout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

Description

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

Type

integer

Default

30

Ini
Section

[persistent_connection]

Key

connect_timeout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

Description

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

Type

path

Default

~/.ansible/pc

Ini
Section

[persistent_connection]

Key

control_path_dir

Environment
Variable

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

path

Version Added

2.9

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

playbook_dir

Environment
Variable

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

top

Choices
  • top
  • bottom
  • all
Version Added

2.4.1

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

playbook_vars_root

Environment
Variable

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.yml

Type

path

Default

None

Version Added

2.5.0

Ini
  • Section

    [default]

    Key

    plugin_filters_cfg

    Deprecated in

    2.12

    Deprecated detail

    specifying “plugin_filters_cfg” under the “default” section is deprecated

    Deprecated alternatives

    the “defaults” section instead

  • Section

    [defaults]

    Key

    plugin_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

0

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

python_module_rlimit_nofile

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PYTHON_MODULE_RLIMIT_NOFILE

Variables
name

ansible_python_module_rlimit_nofile

RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

Description

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

Type

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

retry_files_enabled

Environment
Variable

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

path

Default

None

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

retry_files_save_path

Environment
Variable

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

str

Default

demand

Choices
  • demand
  • start
Version Added

2.10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

run_vars_plugins

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_RUN_VARS_PLUGINS

SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

Description

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

Type

bool

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

show_custom_stats

Environment
Variable

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

string

Default

warn

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

string_conversion_action

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[‘string’, ‘to_json’, ‘to_nice_json’, ‘to_yaml’, ‘to_nice_yaml’, ‘ppretty’, ‘json’]

Ini
Section

[jinja2]

Key

dont_type_filters

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

True

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

system_warnings

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_SYSTEM_WARNINGS

TAGS_RUN

Description

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

Type

list

Default

[]

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[tags]

Key

run

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_RUN_TAGS

TAGS_SKIP

Description

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

Type

list

Default

[]

Version Added

2.5

Ini
Section

[tags]

Key

skip

Environment
Variable

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

boolean

Default

True

Version Added

2.7

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

task_debugger_ignore_errors

Environment
Variable

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

integer

Default

0

Version Added

2.10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

task_timeout

Environment
Variable

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

string

Default

never

Choices
  • always
  • never
  • ignore
  • silently
Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

force_valid_group_names

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_TRANSFORM_INVALID_GROUP_CHARS

USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

Description

Toggles the use of persistence for connections.

Type

boolean

Default

False

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

use_persistent_connections

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

VARIABLE_PLUGINS_ENABLED

Description

Whitelist for variable plugins that require it.

Type

list

Default

[‘host_group_vars’]

Version Added

2.10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

vars_plugins_enabled

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_VARS_ENABLED

VARIABLE_PRECEDENCE

Description

Allows to change the group variable precedence merge order.

Type

list

Default

[‘all_inventory’, ‘groups_inventory’, ‘all_plugins_inventory’, ‘all_plugins_play’, ‘groups_plugins_inventory’, ‘groups_plugins_play’]

Version Added

2.4

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

precedence

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_PRECEDENCE

VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

Description

Force ‘verbose’ option to use stderr instead of stdout

Type

bool

Default

False

Version Added

2.8

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

verbose_to_stderr

Environment
Variable

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

integer

Default

5

Version Added

2.10

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

win_async_startup_timeout

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_WIN_ASYNC_STARTUP_TIMEOUT

Variables
name

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

integer

Default

0

Version Added

2.10

Environment
Variable

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

float

Default

0.1

Version Added

2.10

Environment
Variable

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

list

Default

[‘.yml’, ‘.yaml’, ‘.json’]

Ini
Section

[defaults]

Key

yaml_valid_extensions

Environment
Variable

ANSIBLE_YAML_FILENAME_EXT

Environment Variables

ANSIBLE_CONFIG

Override the default ansible config file

ANSIBLE_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_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_SELECTION

ANSIBLE_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_ACCEPTLIST

Deprecated in

2.15

Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standard

Deprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_COW_ACCEPTLIST

ANSIBLE_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_ACCEPTLIST

Version Added

2.11

ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR

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

See also ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR

ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR

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

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR

NO_COLOR

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

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR

Version Added

2.11

ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

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

See also ANSIBLE_NOCOWS

ANSIBLE_COW_PATH

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

See also ANSIBLE_COW_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_PIPELINING

ANSIBLE_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_FATAL

ANSIBLE_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.

See also BECOME_ALLOW_SAME_USER

ANSIBLE_AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

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

See also AGNOSTIC_BECOME_PROMPT

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN

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

See also CACHE_PLUGIN

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

Defines connection or path information for the cache plugin

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

Prefix to use for cache plugin files/tables

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

Expiration timeout for the cache plugin data

See also CACHE_PLUGIN_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

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

See also COLLECTIONS_SCAN_SYS_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_PATHS

ANSIBLE_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_PATHS

Version Added

2.10

ANSIBLE_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_MISMATCH

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CHANGED

Defines the color to use on ‘Changed’ task status

See also COLOR_CHANGED

ANSIBLE_COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

Defines the default color to use for ansible-console

See also COLOR_CONSOLE_PROMPT

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEBUG

Defines the color to use when emitting debug messages

See also COLOR_DEBUG

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DEPRECATE

Defines the color to use when emitting deprecation messages

See also COLOR_DEPRECATE

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_ADD

Defines the color to use when showing added lines in diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_ADD

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_LINES

Defines the color to use when showing diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_LINES

ANSIBLE_COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

Defines the color to use when showing removed lines in diffs

See also COLOR_DIFF_REMOVE

ANSIBLE_COLOR_ERROR

Defines the color to use when emitting error messages

See also COLOR_ERROR

ANSIBLE_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

Defines the color to use for highlighting

See also COLOR_HIGHLIGHT

ANSIBLE_COLOR_OK

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

See also COLOR_OK

ANSIBLE_COLOR_SKIP

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

See also COLOR_SKIP

ANSIBLE_COLOR_UNREACHABLE

Defines the color to use on ‘Unreachable’ status

See also COLOR_UNREACHABLE

ANSIBLE_COLOR_VERBOSE

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

See also COLOR_VERBOSE

ANSIBLE_COLOR_WARN

Defines the color to use when emitting warning messages

See also COLOR_WARN

ANSIBLE_CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS

With this setting on (True), running conditional evaluation ‘var’ is treated differently than ‘var.subkey’ as the first is evaluated directly while the second goes through the Jinja2 parser. But ‘false’ strings in ‘var’ get evaluated as booleans.With this setting off they both evaluate the same but in cases in which ‘var’ was ‘false’ (a string) it won’t get evaluated as a boolean anymore.Currently this setting defaults to ‘True’ but will soon change to ‘False’ and the setting itself will be removed in the future.Expect that this setting eventually will be deprecated after 2.12

See also CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS

_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_PATHS

ANSIBLE_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_WARNINGS

ANSIBLE_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_WARNINGS

ANSIBLE_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_WARNING

ANSIBLE_DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGINS

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

See also DOC_FRAGMENT_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_ACTION_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_ACTION_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_PASS

ANSIBLE_ASK_VAULT_PASS

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

See also DEFAULT_ASK_VAULT_PASS

ANSIBLE_BECOME

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

See also DEFAULT_BECOME

ANSIBLE_BECOME_ASK_PASS

Toggle to prompt for privilege escalation password.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_ASK_PASS

ANSIBLE_BECOME_METHOD

Privilege escalation method to use when become is enabled.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_METHOD

ANSIBLE_BECOME_EXE

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

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_EXE

ANSIBLE_BECOME_FLAGS

Flags to pass to the privilege escalation executable.

See also DEFAULT_BECOME_FLAGS

ANSIBLE_BECOME_PLUGINS

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

See also BECOME_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_USER

ANSIBLE_CACHE_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_CACHE_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_CALLABLE_WHITELIST

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluation

See also CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LIST

Deprecated in

2.15

Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standard

Deprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_CALLABLE_ENABLED

Whitelist of callable methods to be made available to template evaluation

See also CALLABLE_ACCEPT_LIST

Version Added

2.11

ANSIBLE_CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running a Python version older than Python 3.8 on the controller

See also CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING

ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_CALLBACK_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_ENABLED

Deprecated in

2.15

Deprecated detail

normalizing names to new standard

Deprecated alternatives

ANSIBLE_CALLBACKS_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_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_ENABLED

Version Added

2.11

ANSIBLE_CLICONF_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_CLICONF_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_CONNECTION_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_CONNECTION_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_DEBUG

ANSIBLE_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_EXECUTABLE

ANSIBLE_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_PATH

ANSIBLE_FILTER_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_FILTER_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_HANDLERS

ANSIBLE_FORKS

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

See also DEFAULT_FORKS

ANSIBLE_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_GATHERING

ANSIBLE_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_SUBSET

ANSIBLE_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_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_HANDLER_INCLUDES_STATIC

Since 2.0 M(ansible.builtin.include) can be ‘dynamic’, this setting (if True) forces that if the include appears in a handlers section to be ‘static’.

See also DEFAULT_HANDLER_INCLUDES_STATIC

ANSIBLE_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_BEHAVIOUR

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY

Comma separated list of Ansible inventory sources

See also DEFAULT_HOST_LIST

ANSIBLE_HTTPAPI_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_HTTPAPI_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_INVENTORY_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_EXTENSIONS

ANSIBLE_JINJA2_NATIVE

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

See also DEFAULT_JINJA2_NATIVE

ANSIBLE_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_FILES

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_NOSECLABEL

Deprecated in

2.12

Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecated

Deprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_LIBVIRT_LXC_NOSECLABEL environment variable

ANSIBLE_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_NOSECLABEL

ANSIBLE_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_PLUGINS

ANSIBLE_LOCAL_TEMP

Temporary directory for Ansible to use on the controller.

See also DEFAULT_LOCAL_TMP

ANSIBLE_LOG_PATH

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

See also DEFAULT_LOG_PATH

ANSIBLE_LOG_FILTER

List of logger names to filter out of the log file

See also DEFAULT_LOG_FILTER

ANSIBLE_LOOKUP_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_LOOKUP_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS

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

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_ARGS

ANSIBLE_LIBRARY

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Modules.

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_PATH

ANSIBLE_MODULE_UTILS

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

See also DEFAULT_MODULE_UTILS_PATH

ANSIBLE_NETCONF_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_NETCONF_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_NO_LOG

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

See also DEFAULT_NO_LOG

ANSIBLE_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_SYSLOG

ANSIBLE_NULL_REPRESENTATION

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

See also DEFAULT_NULL_REPRESENTATION

ANSIBLE_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_INTERVAL

ANSIBLE_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_FILE

ANSIBLE_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_VARS

ANSIBLE_REMOTE_PORT

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

See also DEFAULT_REMOTE_PORT

ANSIBLE_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_USER

ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH

Colon separated paths in which Ansible will search for Roles.

See also DEFAULT_ROLES_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_FS

Version Added

2.9

ANSIBLE_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_CALLBACK

ANSIBLE_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_DEBUGGER

ANSIBLE_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_ERRORS

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY

Set the default strategy used for plays.

See also DEFAULT_STRATEGY

ANSIBLE_STRATEGY_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_STRATEGY_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_SU

Toggle the use of “su” for tasks.

See also DEFAULT_SU

ANSIBLE_SYSLOG_FACILITY

Syslog facility to use when Ansible logs to the remote target

See also DEFAULT_SYSLOG_FACILITY

ANSIBLE_TASK_INCLUDES_STATIC

The include tasks can be static or dynamic, this toggles the default expected behaviour if autodetection fails and it is not explicitly set in task.

See also DEFAULT_TASK_INCLUDES_STATIC

ANSIBLE_TERMINAL_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_TERMINAL_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_TEST_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_TEST_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_TIMEOUT

This is the default timeout for connection plugins to use.

See also DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_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_TRANSPORT

ANSIBLE_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_BEHAVIOR

ANSIBLE_VARS_PLUGINS

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

See also DEFAULT_VARS_PLUGIN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_MATCH

ANSIBLE_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_IDENTITY

ANSIBLE_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_IDENTITY

ANSIBLE_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_LIST

ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

The vault password file to use. Equivalent to –vault-password-file or –vault-id

See also DEFAULT_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE

ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY

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

See also DEFAULT_VERBOSITY

ANSIBLE_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

Toggle to control the showing of deprecation warnings

See also DEPRECATION_WARNINGS

ANSIBLE_DEVEL_WARNING

Toggle to control showing warnings related to running devel

See also DEVEL_WARNING

ANSIBLE_DIFF_ALWAYS

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

See also DIFF_ALWAYS

ANSIBLE_DIFF_CONTEXT

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

See also DIFF_CONTEXT

ANSIBLE_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_STDOUT

DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

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

See also DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

Deprecated in

2.12

Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecated

Deprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS environment variable

ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

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

See also DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS

ANSIBLE_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_KEY

ANSIBLE_ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLER

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

See also ERROR_ON_MISSING_HANDLER

ANSIBLE_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_MODULES

ANSIBLE_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_CERTS

ANSIBLE_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_SKELETON

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

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

See also GALAXY_ROLE_SKELETON_IGNORE

ANSIBLE_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_SERVER

ANSIBLE_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_LIST

ANSIBLE_GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

Local path to galaxy access token file

See also GALAXY_TOKEN_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_PROGRESS

ANSIBLE_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_DIR

ANSIBLE_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_CHECKING

ANSIBLE_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_MISMATCH

ANSIBLE_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, auto_silent, and auto_legacy (the default). 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. The default 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 (and issue a warning that the default behavior will change to that of auto in a future Ansible release.

See also INTERPRETER_PYTHON

ANSIBLE_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_CHARS

ANSIBLE_INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

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

See also INVALID_TASK_ATTRIBUTE_FAILED

ANSIBLE_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_FAILED

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE

Toggle to turn on inventory caching

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

The plugin for caching inventory. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN can be used instead.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_CONNECTION

The inventory cache connection. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION can be used instead.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_CONNECTION

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

The table prefix for the cache plugin. If INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX is not provided CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX can be used instead.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_PLUGIN_PREFIX

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Expiration timeout for the inventory cache plugin data. If INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT is not provided CACHE_TIMEOUT can be used instead.

See also INVENTORY_CACHE_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_ENABLED

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

See also INVENTORY_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_EXPORT

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

See also INVENTORY_EXPORT

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE

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

See also INVENTORY_IGNORE_EXTS

ANSIBLE_INVENTORY_IGNORE_REGEX

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

See also INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERNS

ANSIBLE_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_FAILED

ANSIBLE_MAX_DIFF_SIZE

Maximum size of files to be considered for diff display

See also MAX_FILE_SIZE_FOR_DIFF

NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

See also NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

Deprecated in

2.12

Deprecated detail

environment variables without ANSIBLE_ prefix are deprecated

Deprecated alternatives

the ANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES environment variable

ANSIBLE_NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

See also NETWORK_GROUP_MODULES

ANSIBLE_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_VARS

ANSIBLE_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_EXTS

ANSIBLE_OLD_PLUGIN_CACHE_CLEAR

Previouslly 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_CLEARING

ANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

See also PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD

ANSIBLE_PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

See also PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

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

See also PERSISTENT_CONTROL_PATH_DIR

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

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

See also PERSISTENT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

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

See also PERSISTENT_CONNECT_RETRY_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_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_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_PLAYBOOK_DIR

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

See also PLAYBOOK_DIR

ANSIBLE_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_ROOT

ANSIBLE_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_NOFILE

ANSIBLE_RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

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

See also RETRY_FILES_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_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_PATH

ANSIBLE_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_PLUGINS

ANSIBLE_SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

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

See also SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS

ANSIBLE_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_FILTERS

ANSIBLE_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_WARNINGS

ANSIBLE_RUN_TAGS

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

See also TAGS_RUN

ANSIBLE_SKIP_TAGS

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

See also TAGS_SKIP

ANSIBLE_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_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_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_COUNT

ANSIBLE_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_DELAY

ANSIBLE_USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

Toggles the use of persistence for connections.

See also USE_PERSISTENT_CONNECTIONS

ANSIBLE_VARS_ENABLED

Whitelist for variable plugins that require it.

See also VARIABLE_PLUGINS_ENABLED

ANSIBLE_PRECEDENCE

Allows to change the group variable precedence merge order.

See also VARIABLE_PRECEDENCE

ANSIBLE_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_TIMEOUT

ANSIBLE_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_EXTENSIONS

ANSIBLE_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_CONFIG

ANSIBLE_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_ACTION

ANSIBLE_VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

Force ‘verbose’ option to use stderr instead of stdout

See also VERBOSE_TO_STDERR

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2021 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/config.html