Ansible To Get Linux OS Version Details

This article shows the Ansible playbook used to query target systems to get their version details. Ie, the details obtained from “/etc/*release”.

---
    - hosts: all
#      remote_user: root
#      become: yes

      tasks:
      - debug:
          msg:
          - "ansible_distribution {{ hostvars[inventory_hostname].ansible_distribution }}"
          - "major version {{ hostvars[inventory_hostname].ansible_distribution_major_version }}"
          - "version {{ hostvars[inventory_hostname].ansible_distribution_version }}"

You might use the above playbook as demonstrated here – where “get-os-version.yaml” is the Ansible playbook above:

ansible-playbook get-os-version.yaml -i ./hosts

Notice in the above playbook there are two lines commented out. You’re not likely to need root access.