Ansible nested variables in inventory

Question

I've been using Ansible for a while now, and in general have no trouble with variables in inventories. However, for the first time I have to override a nested variable in the inventory, and the I'd expect it to work... doesn't.

The default/main.yml of the role looks like this:

archiver_config:
    archiver_folder: "/opt/archiver"
    source_folder: "/var/tmp/images"
    archive_folder: "/var/tmp/imagearchive"
    min_diskspace: 1e6
    logfile: "/var/log/archiver.log"   

I need to override the default archive folder for some hosts because some of them have an external filesystem attached for this purpose, so I did this in the inventory:

[tdevices]
10.8.0.38 adeploy_name=16014c archiver_config.archive_folder=/media/ext

I have also tried putting the value in double and single quotes, like e.g.

archiver_config.archive_folder='/media/ext'

But it doesn't work. Ansible doesn't throw any errors, but the default value does not get overridden. What's the correct syntax to do this?

Answer 1

There are no "nested variables" in your example. There is only one variable archiver_config which is a dictionary (hash).

You cannot assign a value to a dictionary key in the inventory file.

What you can do is add a variable in the defaults/main.yml, use it as a value for the key (now, this can be called a nested variable):

archive_folder: "/var/tmp/imagearchive"

archiver_config:
    archiver_folder: "/opt/archiver"
    source_folder: "/var/tmp/images"
    archive_folder: "{{archive_folder}}"
    min_diskspace: 1e6
    logfile: "/var/log/archiver.log"  

and assign value to it in the inventory file:

[tdevices]
10.8.0.38 adeploy_name=16014c archive_folder=/media/ext