Best way of writting inventory file

[fanvalt]

Hello,

I have an inventory file to install for one user many ways, it looks like this:

[USER1_DEV1]

PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

[USER1_DEV2]

PARAM="['app1','1.1.0','5']"

[USER1_REC1]

PARAM="['app1','1.0.4','2']"

[USER1_REC2]

PARAM="['app1','1.1.0','6']"

[USER1_PREREC1]

PARAM="['app1','1.0.3','3']"

[USER1_PREREC2]

PARAM="['app1','1.0.3','7']"

[USER1_DEV:children]

USER1_DEV1

USER1_DEV2

[USER1_PREREC:children]

USER1_PREREC1

USER1_PREREC2

[USER1_REC:children]

USER1_REC1

USER1_REC2

[user1:children]

USER1_DEV

USER1_REC

USER1_PREREC

[linux1:children]

user[1:10]

produser[70:72]

[user1:vars]

ansible_user=user1

[linux1:vars]

ansible_host=linux1.fr.com

[webservers:children]

linux1

So when running the ansible-playbook command, I do use the -l option to decide what to deploy (-l USER1_REC in example).

The issue is, that I have 10 users and 10 produsers, all working the same way so I would have to duplicate all these lines again and again like:

[user2:children]

USER2_DEV

USER2_REC

USER2_PREREC

etc ..

but only the first lines are different:

[USER1_DEV1]

PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

[USER2_DEV1]

PARAM="[app1','2.0.1','1']"

[USER1_DEV2]

PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

[USER2_DEV2]

PARAM="[app1','1.1.1','1']"

Is there a simple way to proceed for not writing all these lines ? Shall I try to use a dynamic inventory file , could someone give me an example ?

Regards

[J Hawkesworth]

Have a look at using separate group_vars files for common variables you can apply to more than one machine - see http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_inventory.html#splitting-out-host-and-group-specific-data
Also, consider having different inventory files.  I have a different inventory for development, testing and each production environment.

Hope this helps,

Jon

[Brian Coca]

Using group/host_vars is a good idea, even so, this looks incorrect:

[USER1_DEV1]

PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

It should be:

[USER1_DEV1:vars]

PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

----------

Brian Coca

[fanvalt]

Thank you,

We might use many inventory files, depending on DEV, REC and PROD environments.

I did correct the inventory file, instead of setting [USER1_DEV1:vars], I did add an alias:

[USER1_DEV1]

USER1_DEV1 PARAM="[app1','1.0.1','1']"

so when running the ansible-playbook to list the different hosts, the list contains only the more detailed ones USER1_DEV1, USER2_DEV1 ....

Regards