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Commonly Used Ansible Ad-hoc Commands

1. Ping a Host or Group of Hosts

The ping module checks connectivity to the managed nodes.

ansible all -m ping

This will ping all the hosts in the inventory and check if Ansible can connect to them.

The setup module is used to gather detailed information (facts) about the managed hosts.

ansible all -m setup

This retrieves facts like OS type, memory, disk space, IP address, etc., from all hosts.

Using the apt (for Debian/Ubuntu) or yum (for Red Hat/CentOS) module, you can install packages on remote hosts.

For Ubuntu/Debian:

ansible webservers -m apt -a "name=nginx state=present"

For Red Hat/CentOS:

ansible webservers -m yum -a "name=httpd state=present"

This installs the nginx package on all hosts in the webservers group for Ubuntu or the httpd package for CentOS.

You can use the service module to manage services like starting, stopping, or restarting them.

ansible all -m service -a "name=nginx state=restarted"

This restarts the nginx service on all hosts.

The shell or command module can be used to run shell commands on remote hosts.

ansible all -m shell -a "uptime"

This command runs uptime on all hosts, displaying how long each system has been running.

The copy module can be used to copy files from the control node to the managed nodes.

ansible all -m copy -a "src=/path/to/file dest=/remote/path"

This copies the specified file to the destination path on all managed hosts.

The reboot module is used to reboot a host.

ansible all -m reboot

This reboots all hosts in the inventory.

The user module can be used to add users to remote systems.

ansible all -m user -a "name=john state=present"

This creates a user named john on all hosts.

The shell module can be used to run a command like df -h to check the available disk space on remote hosts.

ansible all -m shell -a "df -h"

This shows the disk space usage on all managed nodes.