Innacurate Behavior of Until Loops

[sjswerdlow]

While referring to: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_loops.html#retrying-a-task-until-a-condition-is-met we found that this specific line is not accurate:

"If until is not specified, the task will retry until the task succeeds but at most retries times."

Instead no retries were done.

Relevant Run Time Env:

ansible [core 2.15.4]
  config file = None
  ...
  python version = 3.9.16 (main, May 29 2023, 00:00:00) [GCC 11.3.1 20221121 (Red Hat 11.3.1-4)] (/usr/bin/python3)
  jinja version = 3.1.3

I'm not sure how to submit issues to Ansible directly. But in my opinion, this line should be removed while the bug is fixed, then added back in.

[ansible-documentation-bot]

Thanks for your Ansible docs contribution! We talk about Ansible documentation on matrix at #docs:ansible.im and on libera IRC at #ansible-docs if you ever want to join us and chat about the docs! We meet there on Tuesdays (see the Ansible calendar) and welcome additions to our weekly agenda items - scroll down to find the upcoming agenda and add a comment to put something new on that agenda.

[oraNod]

Thanks for the issue @sjswerdlow

As a hint for submitting a fix directly, you can fork this repo and make the change to this file: https://github.com/ansible/ansible-documentation/blob/devel/docs/docsite/rst/playbook_guide/playbooks_loops.rst

Then commit the change and open a PR. Alternatively you can edit that one directly on GitHub and create a PR. Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

[flowerysong]

Works for me. If I copy the example task and remove the until, it retries five times and then gives up.

- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Retry a task until a certain condition is met
      ansible.builtin.shell: /usr/bin/foo
      register: result
      retries: 5
      delay: 10

Output:

PLAY [localhost] ***************************************************************

TASK [Retry a task until a certain condition is met] ***************************
FAILED - RETRYING: [localhost]: Retry a task until a certain condition is met (5 retries left).
FAILED - RETRYING: [localhost]: Retry a task until a certain condition is met (4 retries left).
FAILED - RETRYING: [localhost]: Retry a task until a certain condition is met (3 retries left).
FAILED - RETRYING: [localhost]: Retry a task until a certain condition is met (2 retries left).
FAILED - RETRYING: [localhost]: Retry a task until a certain condition is met (1 retries left).
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"attempts": 5, "changed": true, "cmd": "/usr/bin/foo", "delta": "0:00:00.017695", "end": "2024-02-12 14:25:00.204733", "msg": "non-zero return code", "rc": 127, "start": "2024-02-12 14:25:00.187038", "stderr": "/bin/sh: line 1: /usr/bin/foo: No such file or directory", "stderr_lines": ["/bin/sh: line 1: /usr/bin/foo: No such file or directory"], "stdout": "", "stdout_lines": []}

What did you actually try to do, and what was the output?