Linux Administration Cookbook

The raw module

In this case, centos2 already had Python installed (which Ansible needs in order to run modules on remote machines). However, if it hadn't, you would have had to install it on the machine first, or use Ansible's built-in raw module prior to any others.

When you use raw, you're actually running commands directly on the remote machine. This is most commonly seen with a line similar to the following:

$ ansible -b -k -m raw -a 'whoami' -i 192.168.33.11, 192.168.33.11SSH password: 192.168.33.11 | SUCCESS | rc=0 >>rootShared connection to 192.168.33.11 closed.

Note that the remote machine simply responded with SUCCESS and the resulting command. 

We would use this to install python:

$ ansible -b -k -m raw -a 'yum install python -y' ...