This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
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Title       :   Ansible - Only do action if on specific distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS or RHEL) or distribution version (ubuntu precise, ubuntu trusty)
Author      :   Remy van Elst
Date        :   09-11-2014
Last update :   16-12-2018
URL         :   https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Ansible_-_Only_if_on_specific_distribution_or_distribution_version.html
Format      :   Markdown/HTML
---



This Ansible playbook example helps you execute actions only if you are on a
certain distribution. You might have a mixed environment with CentOS and Debian
and when using Ansible to execute actions on nodes you don't need to run Yum on
Debian, or Apt on CentOS. Some package names are different and such, so this
helps you with an only if statement to select a specific distribution. As a
bonus, you also get an `only_if` for specific distribution versions, like Ubuntu
precise (12.04 LTS) or Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS).

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 * 2018-12-16: update ansible syntax to version 2.5, use become
 * 2015-09-24: Added `package` module, changed only_if to when
 * 2014-09-11: Initial release

#### Specific Distribution

On a specific action, add the following `when` statement:



   when: ansible_distribution == 'CentOS' or ansible_distribution == 'Red Hat
   Enterprise Linux'


This is for RHEL and Centos, the following is for Debian/Ubuntu:



   when: ansible_distribution == 'Debian' or ansible_distribution == 'Ubuntu'


This example playbook installs `Apache2` on both Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS. This
example used apache because the name package name is different on the two
distributions.



   ---
   - hosts: example
     become: true
     user: remy
     connection: ssh

     tasks:
     - name: Install apache
       apt:
         name: {{ item }}
         state: latest
       with_items:
        - apache2
       when: ansible_distribution == 'Debian' or ansible_distribution == 'Ubuntu'

     - name: Install httpd
       yum:
         name: {{ item }}
         state: latest
       with_items:
        - httpd
       when: ansible_distribution == 'CentOS' or ansible_distribution == 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux'

     - name: restart apache
       service:
         name: apache2
         state: started
         enabled: yes
       when: ansible_distribution == 'Debian' or ansible_distribution == 'Ubuntu'

     - name: restart httpd
       service:
         name: httpd
         state: started
         enabled: yes
       when: ansible_distribution == 'CentOS' or ansible_distribution == 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux'


#### Specific Distribution Version

You might also need to do different actions based on distribution version,
because some things are available on CentOS 6 but not on 5, or on Ubuntu Lucid
you need to install some backported packages and not on Ubuntu Precise.

For those situations, you can use either the `{{ ansible_distribution_version }`
or `{{ ansible_distribution_release }}` variable. See some example output from
`ansible all -m setup -a "filter=ansible_distribution*"`:



       "ansible_distribution": "CentOS",
       "ansible_distribution_release": "Final",
       "ansible_distribution_version": "5.9"

       "ansible_distribution": "CentOS",
       "ansible_distribution_release": "Final",
       "ansible_distribution_version": "6.4"

       "ansible_distribution": "Ubuntu",
       "ansible_distribution_release": "lucid",
       "ansible_distribution_version": "10.04"

       "ansible_distribution": "Ubuntu",
       "ansible_distribution_release": "precise",
       "ansible_distribution_version": "12.04"

       "ansible_distribution": "Debian",
       "ansible_distribution_release": "wheezy",
       "ansible_distribution_version": "7"


Using these, you can filter the output by changing the `when` statement in your
ansible playbook:



   when: ansible_distribution == 'CentOS' and ansible_distribution_version == '6.4'

   when: ansible_distribution == 'Ubuntu' and ansible_distribution_release == 'precise'

   when: ansible_distribution == 'Debian' and ansible_distribution_version == '7'

   when: ansible_os_family == "RedHat" and ansible_lsb.major_release|int >= 5


#### Package module (2015 short update)

As my former colleague Stein pointed me to, Ansible 2.0 has been released and it
features the `package` module. This is a generic module that installs, upgrade
and removes packages using the underlying OS package manager. This module
actually calls the pertinent package modules for each system (apt, yum, etc).

This means that if you use this article because you want a package install on
Debian and CentOS, you can now just do the following:



   - name: install (or upgrade to) the latest version of htop
     package:
       name: htop
       state: latest


If a package has different names on different distributions, like Apache
(apache2 on ubuntu, httpd on CentOS) you still need to use a when statement.

Read more about the package module on [the ansible Docs website][2].

  [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212
  [2]: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/package_module.html

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