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Ansible Builtin Shell Multiple Commands

The Ansible shell module is a powerful tool that helps with the seamless execution of commands on remote targets. Almost like directly logged into the shell.

While running a single command at a time is not an uncommon sight, the Ansible shell module lets us execute multiple commands simultaneously. Let’s take a look at how to use this feature:

1. First, open a text editor and create a new playbook. Let’s name it `playbook2.yml` and create it in the `~/ansible_shell_module_demo` directory.
2. Then, copy and paste the following content into `playbook2.yml`. Here, the shell module will not create four separate files by running four different commands in the same playbook.

   tasks:
- name: Create multiple text files in tmp directory with shell module
ansible.builtin.shell: |
echo "This goes in log file" > /tmp/log_file.txt
echo "This goes in memory file"> /tmp/memory_file.txt
echo "This goes in disk file" > /tmp/disk_file.txt
echo "This goes in version file"> /tmp/version_file.txt
become: true
args:
chdir: /var/log

3. Now, run the playbook on the designated node (in this example, SRV1) with this command:

   ansible-playbook playbook2.yml --inventory SRV1
4. Next, verify that the files have been created on the remote host.

How to Run Sequential Commands

The shell module also lets us run a sequence of commands to be executed in order.

For example:


- name: Shell module example
hosts: webservers
tasks:
- name: Run multiple commands
shell: |
date > /tmp/date.txt
uptime > /tmp/uptime.txt
echo "Hello World" > /tmp/hello.txt


Here, the commands (date, uptime, echo) are executed in order from the first task to the last.

Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind while running multiple shell commands:

• When running multiple commands, use the vertical bar (`|`) to indicate a multi-line string within the shell module.
• Ensure proper error handling within commands for playbook integrity. We can use `exit 0/1` to control Ansible behavior in case of errors.

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Conclusion

In brief, our Support Experts demonstrated how to run builtin Shell multiple commands in Ansible.