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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">The Inventory File, Patterns, and Groups</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#inventory-file-format">Inventory File Format</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#selecting-targets">Selecting Targets</a></li>
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  <div class="section" id="the-inventory-file-patterns-and-groups">
<span id="patterns"></span><h1>The Inventory File, Patterns, and Groups<a class="headerlink" href="#the-inventory-file-patterns-and-groups" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>How to select hosts you wish to manage</p>
<div class="admonition-see-also admonition seealso">
<p class="first admonition-title">See also</p>
<dl class="last docutils">
<dt><a class="reference internal" href="examples.html"><em>Command Line Examples</em></a></dt>
<dd>Examples of basic commands</dd>
<dt><a class="reference internal" href="playbooks.html"><em>Playbooks</em></a></dt>
<dd>Learning ansible&#8217;s configuration management language</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<div class="section" id="inventory-file-format">
<span id="inventoryformat"></span><h2>Inventory File Format<a class="headerlink" href="#inventory-file-format" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Ansible works against multiple systems in your infrastructure at the
same time.  It does this by selecting portions of systems listed in
Ansible&#8217;s inventory file, which defaults to /etc/ansible/hosts, and
looks like this:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">mail</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>

<span class="p">[</span><span class="n">webservers</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">foo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>
<span class="n">bar</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>

<span class="p">[</span><span class="n">dbservers</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">one</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>
<span class="n">two</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>
<span class="n">three</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">example</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The things in brackets are group names, you don&#8217;t have to have them,
but they are useful.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="selecting-targets">
<h2>Selecting Targets<a class="headerlink" href="#selecting-targets" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>These patterns target all hosts in the inventory file:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>all
*</pre>
</div>
<p>Basically &#8216;all&#8217; is an alias for &#8216;*&#8217;.  It is also possible to address a specific host or hosts:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>one.example.com
one.example.com:two.example.com
192.168.1.50
192.168.1.*</pre>
</div>
<p>The following patterns address one or more groups, which are denoted
with the aforementioned bracket headers in the inventory file:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>webservers
webservers:dbservers</pre>
</div>
<p>Individual host names (or IPs), but not groups, can also be referenced using
wildcards:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>*.example.com
*.com</pre>
</div>
<p>It&#8217;s also ok to mix wildcard patterns and groups at the same time:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>one*.com:dbservers</pre>
</div>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">It is not possible to target a host not in the inventory file.   This is a safety feature.</p>
</div>
<p>Easy enough.  Now see <a class="reference internal" href="examples.html"><em>Command Line Examples</em></a> and then <a class="reference internal" href="playbooks.html"><em>Playbooks</em></a> for how to do things to selected hosts.</p>
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