ansible.builtin.wait_for module – Waits for a condition before continuing

Note

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

Synopsis

• You can wait for a set amount of time timeout, this is the default if nothing is specified or just timeout is specified. This does not produce an error.

• Waiting for a port to become available is useful for when services are not immediately available after their init scripts return which is true of certain Java application servers.

• It is also useful when starting guests with the community.libvirt.virt module and needing to pause until they are ready.

• This module can also be used to wait for a regex match a string to be present in a file.

• In Ansible 1.6 and later, this module can also be used to wait for a file to be available or absent on the filesystem.

• In Ansible 1.8 and later, this module can also be used to wait for active connections to be closed before continuing, useful if a node is being rotated out of a load balancer pool.

• For Windows targets, use the ansible.windows.win_wait_for module instead.

Parameters

Parameter	Comments
active_connection_states list / elements=string	The list of TCP connection states which are counted as active connections. Default: ["ESTABLISHED", "FIN_WAIT1", "FIN_WAIT2", "SYN_RECV", "SYN_SENT", "TIME_WAIT"]
connect_timeout integer	Maximum number of seconds to wait for a connection to happen before closing and retrying. Default: 5
delay integer	Number of seconds to wait before starting to poll. Default: 0
exclude_hosts list / elements=string	List of hosts or IPs to ignore when looking for active TCP connections for drained state.
host string	A resolvable hostname or IP address to wait for. Default: "127.0.0.1"
msg string	This overrides the normal error message from a failure to meet the required conditions.
path path	Path to a file on the filesystem that must exist before continuing. path and port are mutually exclusive parameters.
port integer	Port number to poll. path and port are mutually exclusive parameters.
search_regex string	Can be used to match a string in either a file or a socket connection. Defaults to a multiline regex.
sleep integer	Number of seconds to sleep between checks. Before Ansible 2.3 this was hardcoded to 1 second. Default: 1
state string	Either present, started, or stopped, absent, or drained. When checking a port started will ensure the port is open, stopped will check that it is closed, drained will check for active connections. When checking for a file or a search string present or started will ensure that the file or string is present before continuing, absent will check that file is absent or removed. Choices: "absent" "drained" "present" "started" ← (default) "stopped"
timeout integer	Maximum number of seconds to wait for, when used with another condition it will force an error. When used without other conditions it is equivalent of just sleeping. Default: 300

Attributes

Attribute	Support	Description
check_mode	Support: none	Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target, if not supported the action will be skipped.
diff_mode	Support: none	Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode
platform	Platform: posix	Target OS/families that can be operated against

Notes

Note

• The ability to use search_regex with a port connection was added in Ansible 1.7.

• Prior to Ansible 2.4, testing for the absence of a directory or UNIX socket did not work correctly.

• Prior to Ansible 2.4, testing for the presence of a file did not work correctly if the remote user did not have read access to that file.

• Under some circumstances when using mandatory access control, a path may always be treated as being absent even if it exists, but can’t be modified or created by the remote user either.

• When waiting for a path, symbolic links will be followed. Many other modules that manipulate files do not follow symbolic links, so operations on the path using other modules may not work exactly as expected.

See Also

See also

ansible.builtin.wait_for_connection

Waits until remote system is reachable/usable.

ansible.windows.win_wait_for

The official documentation on the ansible.windows.win_wait_for module.

community.windows.win_wait_for_process

The official documentation on the community.windows.win_wait_for_process module.

Examples

- name: Sleep for 300 seconds and continue with play
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    timeout: 300
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Wait for port 8000 to become open on the host, don't start checking for 10 seconds
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    port: 8000
    delay: 10

- name: Waits for port 8000 of any IP to close active connections, don't start checking for 10 seconds
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 8000
    delay: 10
    state: drained

- name: Wait for port 8000 of any IP to close active connections, ignoring connections for specified hosts
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 8000
    state: drained
    exclude_hosts: 10.2.1.2,10.2.1.3

- name: Wait until the file /tmp/foo is present before continuing
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo

- name: Wait until the string "completed" is in the file /tmp/foo before continuing
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    search_regex: completed

- name: Wait until regex pattern matches in the file /tmp/foo and print the matched group
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    search_regex: completed (?P<task>\w+)
  register: waitfor
- ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: Completed {{ waitfor['match_groupdict']['task'] }}

- name: Wait until the lock file is removed
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /var/lock/file.lock
    state: absent

- name: Wait until the process is finished and pid was destroyed
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /proc/3466/status
    state: absent

- name: Output customized message when failed
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    path: /tmp/foo
    state: present
    msg: Timeout to find file /tmp/foo

# Do not assume the inventory_hostname is resolvable and delay 10 seconds at start
- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    port: 22
    host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
    search_regex: OpenSSH
    delay: 10
  connection: local

# Same as above but you normally have ansible_connection set in inventory, which overrides 'connection'
- name: Wait 300 seconds for port 22 to become open and contain "OpenSSH"
  ansible.builtin.wait_for:
    port: 22
    host: '{{ (ansible_ssh_host|default(ansible_host))|default(inventory_hostname) }}'
    search_regex: OpenSSH
    delay: 10
  vars:
    ansible_connection: local

Return Values

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

Key	Description
elapsed integer	The number of seconds that elapsed while waiting Returned: always Sample: 23
match_groupdict dictionary	Dictionary containing all the named subgroups of the match, keyed by the subgroup name, as returned by https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#re.MatchObject.groupdict Returned: always Sample: {"group": "match"}
match_groups list / elements=string	Tuple containing all the subgroups of the match as returned by https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#re.MatchObject.groups Returned: always Sample: ["match 1", "match 2"]

Authors

• Jeroen Hoekx (@jhoekx)

• John Jarvis (@jarv)

• Andrii Radyk (@AnderEnder)

Collection links

• Issue Tracker
• Repository (Sources)
• Communication