Ansible: Enable Debug and Increase Verbosity

During troubleshooting of Ansible issues it is useful to know how to enable debug mode and increase the level of verbosity.

To enable debug and increase verbosity in Ansible you can pass the corresponding environment variables on the command line or define these settings in Ansible configuration file.

Warning: The debug output can also include secret information despite no_log settings being enabled, which means debug mode should not be used in production.

Enable Debug and Increase Verbosity in Ansible

Run a playbook with enabled debug and with the maximum level of verbosity:

$ ANSIBLE_DEBUG=true ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY=4 ansible-playbook playbook.yml

– or –

$ ANSIBLE_DEBUG=true ansible-playbook playbook.yml -vvvv

You can also define these settings in [defaults] section in ansible.cfg to enable debug in Ansible and set the level of verbosity:

Option Description
verbosity=[0|1|2|3|4] Set the default verbosity level
debug=[false|true] Enable the debug output

Cool Tip: Ansible Playbook – Print Variable & List All Variables! Read more →

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2 Replies to “Ansible: Enable Debug and Increase Verbosity”

  1. There’s a typo in the second command there; you’ve got flags before the command

    1. Thanks! Fixed.

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