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Ansible Inventory Guide

Inventory tells Ansible which hosts to manage and how to group them. A clean inventory makes playbooks easier to reuse.

Static Inventory Example

[webservers]
192.168.1.10
192.168.1.11

[databases]
db1.example.com

Common Inventory Tasks

List the hosts Ansible sees:

ansible all --list-hosts -i inventory.ini

Ping all hosts:

ansible all -m ping -i inventory.ini

Python Interpreter Override

This is useful when a server uses Python 3 in a non-default path.

[webservers]
192.168.1.10 ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3

Practical Advice

  • Group hosts by role, not by random naming
  • Keep inventory readable and predictable
  • Use host variables only when a setting truly differs for one machine

Quick Check

ansible-inventory -i inventory.ini --graph