How can I use ansible playbook to reboot a ubuntu server?

Question

I am trying to build an ansible playbook to configure a ubuntu vagrant box. The playbook is pretty much working with the exception of controlling the ubuntu box reboot after upgrading the kernel.

I have a host file for ansible as follow :

localhost ansible_connection=local
dockerhost ansible_ssh_port=2222 ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1

The latest iteration I tried to solve this problem is as follow :

  - name: Restart the server
    shell: sleep 2s && reboot & executable=/bin/bash

  - name: Wait until the virtual machine stop ie: ssh port stop responding
    local_action: wait_for host={{ansible_ssh_host}} port={{ansible_ssh_port}} state=stopped
    sudo: false

  - name: Wait for server to come up
    local_action: wait_for host={{ansible_ssh_host}} port={{ansible_ssh_port}} delay=30
    sudo: false

With this playbook steps the process block waiting for the ssh port to stop responding, until it reach timeout and exit the playbook, I am guessing that if the reboot is particularly fast it might happen in between the polling intervals of the wait_for command and miss the short time when the ssh port is actually down. The error returned by ansible is :

failed: [dockerhost] => {"elapsed": 300, "failed": true} msg: Timeout when waiting for 127.0.0.1:2222 to stop.

At least once it managed the get to the step where ansible wait for the ssh port to be available again but hung there until timing out. I think this solution is too sensitive to difference in reboot speed, which can vary widely in a virtual environment. The ansible version I am using is 1.5.3 Ubuntu is 12.04lte with a Kernel upgrade to 3.8 The complete playbook install docker and all dependencies.

I tried many variations and ideas found in various web sites but never managed to properly control a reboot and continue my playbook with the next steps.

I am looking for a simple and fool proof way of rebooting the server and continuing with the next steps in a playbook once the machine is back up and running

I have not explored the possibility of running a local vagrant reload because I want to use this same playbook in operation where I will not be running vagrant, I only mentioned vagrant in case it creates some complexities that I am not aware of. I also don't want to just pause 5 minutes and hope for the server to be up again, the point of using this kind of tools is to provision servers in a predictable and timely manner and to be portable from environment to environment, a pause just does not seem right.

I have also looked around for an ansible module that would manage this requirement but comments on the ansible web site seem to rule this out.

Thanks

Answer 1

Might I suggest to use a bridge or private network. Using the port forward might be tricky. I used your code with private and bridged network worked perfectly with both.

Answer 2

You can use the reboot module

- name: Reboot a slow machine that might have lots of updates to apply
  reboot:
     reboot_timeout: 3600

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/reboot_module.html

Answer 3

You need "-y" for the apt-get update and dist-upgrade...it's hung up there I believe.