Table of Contents
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What does the Ansible service module do?
Ansible’s service module controls services on remote hosts and is useful for these common tasks:
- Start, stop or restart a service on a remote host
- name: ensure nginx service is started
service:
name: nginx
state: started
become: true
- name: ensure nginx service is stopped
service:
name: nginx
state: stopped
become: true
- name: restart the nginx service
service:
name: nginx
state: restarted
become: true
- Ensure that a service is started on system boot
- name: ensure nginx service is started and also starts on boot
service:
name: nginx
state: started
enabled: true
become: true
You will usually need to set become: true when using the service module because root or superuser permissions are required when managing services on most systems.
The service module supports BSD init, OpenRC, SysV, Solaris SMF, systemd, upstart.
Examples
How to start a service
Set the name parameter to the service name and the state parameter to started to start a service. If the service is already running, Ansible will do nothing.
- name: ensure nginx service is started
service:
name: nginx
state: started
become: true
How to stop a service
Set the name parameter to the service name and the state parameter to stopped to stop a service. If the service is not running, Ansible will do nothing.
- name: ensure nginx service is stopped
service:
name: nginx
state: stopped
become: true
How to restart a service
Set the name parameter to the service name and the state parameter to restarted to restart a service.
- name: restart the nginx service
service:
name: nginx
state: restarted
become: true
How to restart multiple services in a loop
Use the loop keyword and {{ item }} to restart multiple services in a loop.
- name: restart multiple services in a loop
service:
name: "{{ item }}"
state: started
enabled: true
become: true
loop:
- nginx
- rsyslog
How to ensure a service starts on boot/reboot
Set the name parameter to the service name and the enabled parameter to true to ensure a service starts on system boot/reboot. It’s possible to set the state and enabled parameters at the same time.
- name: ensure nginx service is started and also starts on boot/reboot
service:
name: nginx
state: started
enabled: true
become: true
How to capture service module output
Use the register keyword to capture the output of the service module.
- name: ensure nginx service is started and also starts on boot
service:
name: nginx
state: started
enabled: true
become: true
register: service_output
- debug: var=service_output
The debug task above will output the following:
ok: [123.123.123.123] => {
"service_output": {
"changed": true,
"enabled": true,
"failed": false,
"name": "nginx",
"state": "started",
"status": {...}
}
}
How to capture service module output from a loop
When using the service module in a loop, the output of each item in the loop will go into the results key of the registered variable.
- name: restart multiple services in a loop
service:
name: "{{ item }}"
state: started
enabled: true
become: true
register: service_output
loop:
- nginx
- rsyslog
- debug: var=service_output
ok: [123.123.123.123] => {
"service_output": {
"changed": false,
"msg": "All items completed",
"results": [
{
...
"changed": false,
"enabled": true,
"failed": false,
"invocation": {...},
"item": "nginx",
"name": "nginx",
"state": "started",
"status": {...}
},
{
...
"changed": false,
"enabled": true,
"failed": false,
"invocation": {...},
"item": "rsyslog",
"name": "rsyslog",
"state": "started",
"status": {...}
}
]
}
}
Further reading
Ansible service Module on Ansible Docs