mjhjmtu

i have below detail in /etc/ansible/hosts

[dev] 10.13.212.32

and i am able ping this hosts as below:

# ansible dev -m ping

Output:

[root@localhost ~]# ansible dev -m ping
10.13.212.32 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"

when i check syntax of *.yml file .

# ansible-playbook --syntax-check --list-tasks -i hosts ./nginx.yml

or

# ansible-playbook nginx.yml --check**
 [WARNING]: Unable to parse /root/hosts as an inventory source

 [WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available

 [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all'

ERROR! Syntax Error while loading YAML.
 did not find expected '-' indicator

The error appears to have been in '/root/nginx.yml': line 3, column 1, but may
be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.

The offending line appears to be:

- name: install and start nginx
hosts: localhost
^ here

help me out with the issue.

The error is exactly what is says, there is no /root/hosts file!

ansible-playbook --syntax-check --list-tasks -i hosts ./nginx.yml

With the -i switch (--inventory-file), you are pointing to the file /root/hosts (since you are running as root, from root's $HOME) instead of the file:

/etc/ansible/hosts

So, try again with:

ansible-playbook --syntax-check --list-tasks -i /etc/ansible/hosts ./nginx.yml

And your playbook fails due to incorrect syntax and indentation. Check this example for starters.