Demo of pkill behaviour with Ansible

pkilldemo output

[will@fedora pkilldemo]$ ansible-playbook pkilldemo.yml 

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

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
ok: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [generate random process string] **************************************** 
changed: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [warn user] ************************************************************* 
[127.0.0.1]
About to kill processes matching lkSm/8UMTb9bR2ZharCU with signal SIGIO. Hit Return to continue or Ctrl-C then a to abort:

ok: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [show bad effects of pkill -f] ****************************************** 
changed: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [works ok without -f] *************************************************** 
changed: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [works ok with pgrep -f] ************************************************ 
changed: [127.0.0.1]

TASK: [this is supposed to fail as we don't handle the error with true] ******* 
failed: [127.0.0.1] => {"changed": true, "cmd": "pgrep -f lkSm/8UMTb9bR2ZharCU ", "delta": "0:00:00.023586", "end": "2014-05-28 21:00:54.400289", "rc": 1, "start": "2014-05-28 21:00:54.376703"}
...ignoring

pkilldemo.yml

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local

  tasks:
  - name: generate random process string
    action: shell openssl rand 15 | base64
    register: process_string

  - name: warn user
    pause: prompt="About to kill processes matching {{process_string.stdout}} with signal SIGIO. Hit Return to continue or Ctrl-C then a to abort"

  - name: show bad effects of pkill -f
    action: shell pkill -IO -f {{process_string.stdout}} || true
    ignore_errors: True

  - name: works ok without -f 
    action: shell pkill -IO {{process_string.stdout}} || true

  - name: works ok with pgrep -f
    action: shell pgrep -f {{process_string.stdout}} || true

  - name: this is supposed to fail as we don't handle the error with true
    action: shell pgrep -f {{process_string.stdout}}
    ignore_errors: True