Need help in using set_fact , playbook runs fine , facts not set , no errors

[Marc Roelofs]

Hi Group, 

I am trying to add some basic facts to a system but nothing seems to work. 

My goal is to add a simple fact like the type of the server and the main application running on it  to be set 

Type of server can be webserver (apache/tomcat)/ database server (mysql/postgress .. etc)  

And I would like to do this from the commandline  with -e at initial deployment of a server. 

My main.yml looks like this 

__________________________________________________________________________

---

# Task to set facts on system, based on commandline variables

- name: Set system facts

  action: set_fact system_type={{system_type}}

  action: set_fact main_app={{main_app}}

_________________________________________________________________________

and the result = 

TASK: [system-config | Set system facts] **************************************

ok: [my-targeted-machine]

I tried several forms of code like suggested in the http://docs.ansible.com/set_fact_module.html page  

____________________________________________________________________________

---

# Task to set facts on system, based on commandline variables

- name: Set system facts

  set_fact: system_type="{{system_type}}" main_app="{{main_app}}"

____________________________________________________________________________

Has the same result 

ok: [my-targeted-machine]

Or 

____________________________________________________________________________

---

# Task to set facts on system, based on commandline variables

- name: Set system facts

- set_fact: system_type="{{system_type}}" main_app="{{main_app}}"

____________________________________________________________________________

Has this result : ERROR: 'action' or 'local_action' attribute missing in task "Set system facts"

And when removing the -name: Set system facts line I can see my variables are used from the commandline :-) 

$ ansible-playbook -i 'mytargeted-machine,' all.yml --extra-vars '{"system_type":"webservert","main_app":"apache2"}'

TASK: [system-config | set_fact system_type="webservert" main_app="apache2"] ***

ok: [my-targeted-machine]

So what would be the best approach to set a fact ??

. 

Ultimate goal: use fact caching and targeting machines with specific facts !

[Brian Coca]

First, set_fact is ephemeral (only lasts for the current ansible run), your first 2 attempts were succeeding, to see the results you can run:

 - debug: msg="systemtype:{{system_type}}" 

second, the - denotes a task, so - name + - action doen't work, name is a property of the task and has to be in the same grouping.

- name: 

  action:

or 

- action:

  name: 

you can add this information permanently either by adding it as group_var/host_var or you can use a file in /etc/ansible/facts.d on the target machines

--

Brian Coca