I execute a shell: docker ps ... task in some of my playbooks. This normally works but sometimes the docker daemon hangs and docker ps does not return for ~2 hours.
How can I configure Ansible to timeout in a reasonable amount of time if docker ps does not return?
A task timeout is added in 2.10 release, which is useful in such scenario.
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/33180
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/69284
For example, below playbook fails in 2.10 version:
---
- hosts: localhost
connection: local
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- shell: |
while true; do
sleep 1
done
timeout: 5
...
with an error message like:
TASK [shell] **************************************************************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "The shell action failed to execute in the expected time frame (5) and was terminated"}
There is no timeout-for-a-task-functionality implemented in Ansible.
You can try a workaround using asynchronous call, but for this case (clearly a kind of a bug) relying on the system might be easier and more appropriate.
See the GNU timeout command (if you run Docker, chances are the command is present on your OS):
shell: timeout 5m docker ps ...
Weighing in on this in case someone comes across it, there was a timeout option added in a later version which allows you to specify the following variables in your inventory file on WinRM instances:
ansible_winrm_operation_timeout_sec: 120
ansible_winrm_read_timeout_sec: 150
My use case was a docker swarm init which is pretty messy on Windows but performs fine on Linux. It didn't resolve my issue but it may resolve yours depending on your transport.
I did also note https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/69284/files but this isn't explained anywhere that I could find.