Run Command Inside of Docker Container Using Ansible

what I'm trying to accomplish is to run commands inside of a Docker container that has already been created on a Digital Ocean Ubuntu/Docker Droplet using Ansible.

Can't seem to find anything on this, or I'm majorly missing something. This is my Ansible task in my play book. I'm very new to Ansible so any advice or wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

- name: Test Deploy
    hosts: [my-cluster-of-servers]

tasks: 
  - name: Go Into Docker Container And Run Multiple Commands
    docker:
      name: [container-name]
      image: [image-ive-created-container-with-on-server]
      state: present
      command: docker exec -it [container-name] bash

Solution 1:

After discussion with some very helpful developers on the ansible github project, a better way to do this is like so:

- name: add container to inventory
  add_host:
    name: [container-name]
    ansible_connection: docker
  changed_when: false

- name: run command in container
  delegate_to: [container-name]
  raw: bash

If you have python installed in your image, you can use the command module or any other module instead of raw.

If you want to do this on a remote docker host, add:

ansible_docker_extra_args: "-H=tcp://[docker-host]:[api port]"

to the add_host block.

See the Ansible documentation for a more complete example.

Solution 2:

You should be able to execute a script (with your sequence of command in it) with docker exec:

docker exec container-name bash -l -c /path/to/script > /path/to/log

(See also "Why do I have to use bash -l -c inside my container?")

• /path/to/script should be accessible by your Ansible process.
• /path/to/log is a path inside the container, that could be shared in a volume.