ansible.builtin.pause module – Pause playbook execution

Note

This module is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name pause even without specifying the collections keyword. However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.pause for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

Synopsis

• Pauses playbook execution for a set amount of time, or until a prompt is acknowledged. All parameters are optional. The default behavior is to pause with a prompt.

• To pause/wait/sleep per host, use the ansible.builtin.wait_for module.

• You can use ctrl+c if you wish to advance a pause earlier than it is set to expire or if you need to abort a playbook run entirely. To continue early press ctrl+c and then c. To abort a playbook press ctrl+c and then a.

• Prompting for a set amount of time is not supported. Pausing playbook execution is interruptible but does not return user input.

• The pause module integrates into async/parallelized playbooks without any special considerations (see Rolling Updates). When using pauses with the serial playbook parameter (as in rolling updates) you are only prompted once for the current group of hosts.

• This module is also supported for Windows targets.

Note

This module has a corresponding action plugin.

Parameters

Parameter	Comments
echo boolean	Controls whether or not keyboard input is shown when typing. Only has effect if neither seconds nor minutes are set. Choices: false true ← (default)
minutes string	A positive number of minutes to pause for.
prompt string	Optional text to use for the prompt message. User input is only returned if seconds and minutes are both not specified, otherwise this is just a custom message before playbook execution is paused.
seconds string	A positive number of seconds to pause for.

Attributes

Attribute	Support	Description
action	Support: full	Indicates this has a corresponding action plugin so some parts of the options can be executed on the controller
async	Support: none	Supports being used with the async keyword
become	Support: none	Is usable alongside become keywords
bypass_host_loop	Support: full	Forces a ‘global’ task that does not execute per host, this bypasses per host templating and serial, throttle and other loop considerations Conditionals will work as if run_once is being used, variables used will be from the first available host This action will not work normally outside of lockstep strategies
check_mode	Support: full	Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target, if not supported the action will be skipped.
connection	Support: none	Uses the target’s configured connection information to execute code on it
delegation	Support: none	Can be used in conjunction with delegate_to and related keywords
diff_mode	Support: none	Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode
platform	Platforms: all	Target OS/families that can be operated against

Notes

Note

• Starting in 2.2, if you specify 0 or negative for minutes or seconds, it will wait for 1 second, previously it would wait indefinitely.

• User input is not captured or echoed, regardless of echo setting, when minutes or seconds is specified.

Examples

- name: Pause for 5 minutes to build app cache
  ansible.builtin.pause:
    minutes: 5

- name: Pause until you can verify updates to an application were successful
  ansible.builtin.pause:

- name: A helpful reminder of what to look out for post-update
  ansible.builtin.pause:
    prompt: "Make sure org.foo.FooOverload exception is not present"

- name: Pause to get some sensitive input
  ansible.builtin.pause:
    prompt: "Enter a secret"
    echo: no

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key	Description
delta string	Time paused in seconds Returned: always Sample: "2"
echo boolean	Value of echo setting Returned: always Sample: true
start string	Time when started pausing Returned: always Sample: "2017-02-23 14:35:07.298862"
stdout string	Output of pause module Returned: always Sample: "Paused for 0.04 minutes"
stop string	Time when ended pausing Returned: always Sample: "2017-02-23 14:35:09.552594"
user_input string	User input from interactive console Returned: if no waiting time set Sample: "Example user input"

Authors

• Tim Bielawa (@tbielawa)

Collection links

• Issue Tracker
• Repository (Sources)
• Communication