Ansible Modules and Collections

Ansible Modules

Ansible executes tasks through modules, such as ansible.builtin.hostname for setting the hostname.

ansible.builtin is the namespace for modules. Different modules belong to different namespaces. Generally, module names do not conflict, but as the number of modules increases, the possibility of name conflicts cannot be ruled out. Therefore, different modules are placed in different namespaces for distinction. If there are no name conflicts with the modules installed on the control node, the namespace can be omitted when calling the module, such as:hostname。

Ansible is written in Python, so most of Ansible’s modules require Python to be installed on the managed hosts, with a few exceptions, such as:ansible.builtin.raw。

Here are some commonly used modules.

File and Directory Operation Modules

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.copy</span>`	Copy files to remote hosts
`<span>ansible.builtin.template</span>`	Render Jinja2 templates and transfer them
`<span>ansible.builtin.fetch</span>`	Fetch files from remote hosts
`<span>ansible.builtin.file</span>`	Set file permissions, ownership, etc.
`<span>ansible.builtin.stat</span>`	Get file status
`<span>ansible.builtin.unarchive</span>`	Unarchive files
`<span>ansible.builtin.lineinfile</span>`	Modify a line in a file
`<span>ansible.builtin.blockinfile</span>`	Insert multiple lines into a file

System Management Modules

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.hostname</span>`	Set the hostname
`<span>ansible.builtin.user</span>`	Create/modify/delete users
`<span>ansible.builtin.group</span>`	Create/modify/delete user groups
`<span>ansible.builtin.service</span>`	Manage system services
`<span>ansible.builtin.systemd</span>`	Manage systemd services
`<span>ansible.builtin.package</span>`	Install/uninstall common packages (automatically selects backend)
`<span>ansible.builtin.yum</span>`	Install packages using yum
`<span>ansible.builtin.apt</span>`	Install packages using apt
`<span>ansible.builtin.dnf</span>`	Install packages using dnf

Command Execution Modules

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.command</span>`	Run ordinary commands (does not support pipes, redirection)
`<span>ansible.builtin.shell</span>`	Run shell commands (supports pipes, redirection, etc.)
`<span>ansible.builtin.raw</span>`	Raw command execution, does not go through the module system
`<span>ansible.builtin.script</span>`	Upload and execute local scripts

Archiving and Compression

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.archive</span>`	Create archive files (e.g., tar.gz)
`<span>ansible.builtin.unarchive</span>`	Unarchive files

Permissions and Authentication

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.seboolean</span>`	Manage SELinux boolean values
`<span>ansible.builtin.selinux</span>`	Set SELinux mode
`<span>ansible.builtin.authorized_key</span>`	Add SSH public key to user `<span>~/.ssh/authorized_keys</span>`

Networking and Remote Connections

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.uri</span>`	Send HTTP requests
`<span>ansible.builtin.get_url</span>`	Download files
`<span>ansible.builtin.wait_for</span>`	Wait for port/file status changes

Control Logic Modules

Module Name	Description
`<span>ansible.builtin.debug</span>`	Output debug information
`<span>ansible.builtin.pause</span>`	Pause execution
`<span>ansible.builtin.assert</span>`	Conditional assertion
`<span>ansible.builtin.set_fact</span>`	Set custom variables

These modules can be viewed through ansible-doc <module_name> to see the help documentation. You can quickly understand the usage of a module by searching for EXAMPLE, and you can also view module options by using ansible-doc -s <module_name>.

For example, the ansible.builtin.systemd module is used for service management. You can view the module documentation and search for EXAMPLE using ansible-doc.

[root@awx-1 ansible]# ansible-doc ansible.builtin.systemd
# Search with /EXAMPLE
EXAMPLES:

- name: Make sure a service unit is running
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    state: started
    name: httpd

- name: Stop service cron on debian, if running
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: cron
    state: stopped

- name: Restart service cron on centos, in all cases, also issue daemon-reload to pick up config changes
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    state: restarted
    daemon_reload: true
    name: crond

- name: Reload service httpd, in all cases
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: httpd.service
    state: reloaded

- name: Enable service httpd and ensure it is not masked
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: httpd
    enabled: true
    masked: no

- name: Enable a timer unit for dnf-automatic
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: dnf-automatic.timer
    state: started
    enabled: true

- name: Just force systemd to reread configs (2.4 and above)
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    daemon_reload: true

- name: Just force systemd to re-execute itself (2.8 and above)
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    daemon_reexec: true

- name: Run a user service when XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set on remote login
  ansible.builtin.systemd:
    name: myservice
    state: started
    scope: user
  environment:
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR: "/run/user/{{ myuid }}"

Many options are self-explanatory, for example, enabled is used to set whether to start on boot, and state is used to set the service status.

More modules can be found on the official website: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/all_plugins.html

You can also search for modules here: https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/

Regarding modules, I will write separately about commonly used modules and their common options later.

Ansible Collections

Ansible-core comes with a set of modules starting with ansible.builtin, but these modules are far from sufficient. Additional modules are needed to extend Ansible’s functionality. To facilitate the management of these modules, they are categorized, and a set of modules forms a collection.

Ansible Modules and Collections — image-20250407230437287

# Download collection
ansible-galaxy collection download community.general