Retrieving system information from managed nodes is much easier with Ansible ad hoc commands. Although Ansible ad hoc commands are not ideal for long-term maintenance and do not scale well, they are useful for quickly gathering system information from remote servers. This blog post demonstrates a few common Ansible ad hoc commands:
| Command | Usage |
|---|---|
ansible -i /path/to/inventory/file nodes -m ping | Ping remote servers using the Ansible ping module |
ansible -i /path/to/inventory/file nodes -m command -a 'uname -r' | Get kernel version information |
ansible -i /path/to/inventory/file nodes -a "free -h" | Check memory usage on remote nodes |
ansible -i /path/to/inventory/file nodes -a "df -h" | Retrieve available disk space details |
ansible -i /path/to/inventory/file nodes -a "date" | Get date and time information from remote nodes |
Note: In the commands above, nodes refers to a group defined in the inventory file that contains a list of IP addresses or DNS names of remote nodes along with login credentials. If no Ansible module is specified in a command, Ansible defaults to using the command module.