ansible.command(3) - Linux man page

Name

command - Executes a command on a remote node

Description

The command module takes the command name followed by a list of space-delimited arguments.

The given command will be executed on all selected nodes. It will not be processed through the shell, so variables like $HOME and operations like "<", ">", "|", and "&" will not work. As such, all paths to commands must be fully qualified

Options

chdir cd into this directory before running the command(Added in Ansible version 0.6.)
creates: a filename, when it already exists, this step will not be run.
executable: change the shell used to execute the command. Should be an absolute path to the executable.(Added in Ansible version 0.9.)
free_form: the command module takes a free form command to run(required)
removes: a filename, when it does not exist, this step will not be run.(Added in Ansible version 0.8.)

Notes

If you want to run a command through the shell (say you are using <, >, |, etc), you actually want the shell module instead. The command module is much more secure as it's not affected by the user's environment.

Examples

Example from Ansible Playbooks

command: /sbin/shutdown -t now

creates, removes, and chdir can be specified after the command. For instance, if you only want to run a command if a certain file does not exist, use this.

command: /usr/bin/make_database.sh arg1 arg2 creates=/path/to/database

Author

Michael DeHaan