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So friends, and this particular video, what I want to do to talk to you about

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some syntax issues that you may have with Ansible, because

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quite honestly, this is a bit of a problem, YAML well, so it is very, very

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human readable, it is nice to look at, but it can be very

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per-negative with respect to syntax, that is because it is sensitive to white

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space, and quite honestly, it happens to us all

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misalignments within the document is going to happen, especially when you're

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creating multiple different plays

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with multiple different tasks, that type of thing. So let me just highlight
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with multiple different tasks, that type of thing. So let me just highlight

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some small issues that you can check, just as a way to help reduce the

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frequency

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of these errors. So what I will do here is, if I go and look at my Playbook

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here, I've got Playbook 4, I believe. Yep, so all I

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will do here is I will copy this one, play 4, and let me just create play5.yml.

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So if I go inside here, now take for example, this

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Playbook here, we've got two simple tasks, basically run a command, capture the

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output, and then print that output. Now, what you

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might do, in fact, I've very often done, is do something like this, okay? Knock
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might do, in fact, I've very often done, is do something like this, okay? Knock

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this in two spaces. When I look at this, it doesn't

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always look like there's anything wrong. In fact, if you happen to look at a Y

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AML format, and let me just grab this right here, and just

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copy here. If you search for YAML syntax, check it here and go to this

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particular page right here, and I paste this in. If I

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click go, it tells me this is valid YAML. Now when I go to run this Playbook,

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we're going to have an issue. So let's

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save this. Let's run the Playbook. So as we can see here, we're getting our

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error very crucially. We want to be reading the contents
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error very crucially. We want to be reading the contents

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of that message. It says here we have a failure, and it says the message is

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that we have unsupported parameters for the

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Ansible command, okay? Now again, this is why it's very important to really,

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really read the actual output here. It does tell

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us the module register, and again, the ugly line wrapping is a little bit

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annoying, but nevertheless, that's what it's

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saying here. This one is the problem. So by just looking at the output here, we

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can see the module register is the issue at

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hands. Now if we go back into our playbook, we need to understand the
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hands. Now if we go back into our playbook, we need to understand the

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relationship we're trying to establish here. By virtue of

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having this parameter indented within the command parameter, we are effectively

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saying that the register keyword belongs to

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this particular module. Now is that actually true? Well, if you happen to go to

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the documentation and you look through the

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docs for Ansible built-in command, in fact, what I could do is just direct from

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the command line, which is a very good way to

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handle this problem. And I just say Ansible built-in command and to answer. Now

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you're going to notice here in the actual
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you're going to notice here in the actual

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options, if I scroll on down all the way to R, notice we do not have a register

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parameter. That is actually a separate

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command altogether. It doesn't actually belong to the command module itself. So

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both this playbook does contain valid

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yaml syntax. It is actually erroneous on the basis of the Ansible configuration

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itself. So as we know, this clearly doesn't

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belong to the Ansible command utility. What we want to do is you want to out

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dent it. So it's at the same level of indentation

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as the command module. And this is going to make much more sense. So if I
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as the command module. And this is going to make much more sense. So if I

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happen to just save this right here, and I run

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the playbook, hit enter, as we can see here, the playbook now successfully

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executes. Now one thing I would recommend you do is

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when you happen to be creating these playbooks is that you can use these online

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tools such as yaml, lint, they can be very,

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very handy. However, in the case of the examination, these online tools are not

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going to be available to you. So whilst it's

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good, as you learn and get familiar with building these playbooks and your

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preparation to become more comfortable,

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essentially, we would like to look at some tools we can actually use for real
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essentially, we would like to look at some tools we can actually use for real

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to help us out. Now, just to be clear here, when

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we happen to run an Ansible playbook, by default, Ansible is going to

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automatically check the syntax. Let me show you what I

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mean. So if I go back into my playbook right here, so what I will do here is I

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will maybe change the indentation. Let's move

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this in one space. Okay, so it's a little bit out same again here and again

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here, because we don't have the consistent indentation

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tasks here has a list out dented at this level, which is four spaces in. And

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the next key is actually in dented five spaces. When I
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the next key is actually in dented five spaces. When I

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go to run the playbook, Ansible by default, like I say, is going to check the

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syntax for me, it says here, the offending line

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appears to be here. It tells us this is where the problem is at this portion

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right here, the print the output stage. So I can

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check that straight away. However, if you want to be able to just check your

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syntax without having to run the playbook, so

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basically, you want to make sure everything is in order before we even attempt

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to push the changes, then we do actually have an

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additional flag that we can specify known as syntax rather dash dash syntax
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additional flag that we can specify known as syntax rather dash dash syntax

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dash check. So let's see how this operates

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them. So again, like you see, we have this slight indentation error here. If

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though, when I go to run the playbook, I just

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say dash dash syntax dash check and enter notice when there is an error, we get

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the same type of output. But the difference

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being is that when we happen to say, for example, fix the playbook so that

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there are no problems at all. If I redone

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the command and hit enter, it just gives me this nice little summary telling me

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that this particular playbook is fine. Whereas if I
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that this particular playbook is fine. Whereas if I

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remove the syntax check when the playbook is going to operate and I enter, we

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actually get the output, you see the difference. So a

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good use case would be if you happen to have a whole bunch of playbooks. And

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you just want to quickly check that the

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syntax is OK, what you can do is say, Ansible playbook, and then say star,

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which is a wildcard dot yaml. So pretty much

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Ansible playbook for anything that ends in dot yaml. And then we can just say

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dash dash syntax dash check. And all we're doing here

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is seeing all of the playbooks that are correctly following the yaml syntax.
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is seeing all of the playbooks that are correctly following the yaml syntax.

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Now again, if we happen to make an error here,

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let's go into let's maybe say play for this time. Again, let's maybe add a new

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task, we're sitting on our test task, or just a debug

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message here as a test. Because the indentation is actually a little bit out

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here, if I just happened to run my syntax check against

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all my playbooks, actually tells me where we have an error, it says the error

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appears to be in the play for dot yaml of line 14 column

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number four, it shows me exactly where the problem happens to be. So this can
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number four, it shows me exactly where the problem happens to be. So this can

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be a very good way to quickly check all of your

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playbooks have been correctly formatted in conjunction with the yaml standards.

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But just understand because they are passing a syntax

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check in yaml, that does not mean that the modules have been aligned correctly,

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as we saw earlier before, like I say, with the

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register module. So if you happen to be unsure whether or not a particular

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keyword belongs to a particular module, then a quick

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way to check that information would just be to use the answerable hyphen dot

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command line utility in order to verify all of the
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command line utility in order to verify all of the

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correct parameters.