Ansible Inventory¶

The inventory file can different extensions like .yaml or .ini. You can leverage ansible-inventory command to check the format of the file.

ansible-inventory -i inventory.yaml --list

It is recommended to create an ansible.cfg file in the root directory of the project to avoid specifying the inventory file every time.

# ansible.cfg

[defaults]
inventory = inventory.yaml

Now we can verify the inventory using ansible-inventory --list.

Any host we mention in the inventory file will at least be a part of 2 groups, even if we don't explicitly create them: all and ungrouped. If we put a host in a group, then it will belong to that group along with the all group.

For instance, consider the following sample.

all:
  hosts:
    localhost:
      ansible_connection: local

If we print the graph of the inventory using ansible-inventory --graph, we get the following.

ansible-inventory --graph

@all:
  |--@ungrouped:
  |  |--localhost

As we can see, it belongs to both, ungrouped as well as all groups.

Of course, we can ping the host using ansible and that way we can verify if the host is accessible.

ansible all -m ping

# [WARNING]: Platform linux on host localhost is using the discovered Python interpreter at /usr/bin/python3.12, but future installation of another Python interpreter could change the meaning of that path. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.17/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
localhost | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3.12"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}

We can see the output which confirms that this host is reachable.

The warning we get is because we are missing the info about interpreter (the python interpreter) in the ansible.cfg file.

Ansible Inventory¶

References:¶