If you have a large playbook, it make sense to run certain parts of it instead of running the entire playbook especially in troubleshooting time. You can do this with Ansible tags. With tags, you don’t have to write a separate playbook just with those tasks that you want to run. Instead you run the entire playbook but with tags and only tasks with those tags will be run.
you can add one or more tags to a single task. You can also apply the same tag to more than one individual task. one tag can be added to multiple tasks at once by defining them at the level of a play. In other word, when you add a tag in play level, it will be applied to all task within the play.
root@debian:~/ansible-project1# cat tags.yaml
---
- hosts: csr1
gather_facts: false
connection: network_cli
tags:
- config
tasks:
- name: eigrp config
ios_config:
src: "eigrp_template.j2"
match: none
tags:
- eigrp
- template
- tag1
- name: hostname config
ios_config:
lines: hostname {{ inventory_hostname }}
tags:
- hostname
- tag1
access ansible codes of this course in github
this is a video-based training therefore the output of running commands are not show in the text.
ansible tags in ansible website
To list all tasks with their tags, use –list-task
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --list-tasks! to check the ouptut of commands, pleas watch the video
To list all tags, use –list-tags
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --list-tagsWhen you run a playbook, by default all tasks will be run
# ansible-playbook tags.yamlTo run tasks with specific tags, use –tag in the running playbook
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --tag hostname
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --tag eigrp
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --tag “eigrp, hostname”To run tasks that do not contain specific tags, use –skip-tags keyword
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --skip-tags eigrp
# ansible-playbook tags.yaml --skip-tags “eigrp, hostname”