Cray System Management Documentation > Cray System Management (CSM) Administration Guide > configuration management > Change the Ansible Verbosity Logs

Change the Ansible Verbosity Logs

Overview

When debugging, it can be useful to view the Ansible logs with greater verbosity than the default. Valid verbosity levels are the integers 0 (the default) through 4, with higher numbers indicating increased verbosity. These translate into the number of -v arguments passed into the ansible-playbook command when the playbooks are executed.

Verbosity	Argument
`0`
`1`	`-v`
`2`	`-vv`
`3`	`-vvv`
`4`	`-vvvv`

How Ansible verbosity level is determined

The Ansible verbosity is determined at the time that the CFS session starts. The verbosity is applied to all configuration layers in the session. The verbosity is set to the first one of the following things that successfully specifies a verbosity level.

If a verbosity level was specified directly when the session was created (using the CFS API or CLI), then this level is used.
If an Ansible configuration was specified directly when the session was created (using the CFS API or CLI), and if that configuration specifies a verbosity level, then this level is used.
If no Ansible configuration was specified directly when the session was created (using the CFS API or CLI), and if a verbosity level is specified in the default Ansible configuration, then this level is used.
Default to running at a verbosity level of 0.

For more information on Ansible configurations, see Set the ansible.cfg for a Session.

Considerations for high verbosity levels

When increasing Ansible verbosity, be aware that it can produce a lot of output, and in some cases can even cause problems.

It is not recommended to use level 3 or 4 with sessions that target a large numbers of hosts. Avoid this by setting an Ansible limit, reducing the number of targets.
- See Creating sessions with increased verbosity for details on how to specify an Ansible limit.
Consider reviewing the Ansible tasks being run and altering them, in order to reduce their log output.
WARNING: Setting the Ansible verbosity to 4 can cause CFS sessions to hang. There are multiple ways to avoid this issue:
- Reduce the verbosity to 3 or lower.
- Adjust the display_ok_hosts and display_skipped_hosts settings in the Ansible configuration that the session is using. For more details, see Set the ansible.cfg for a Session.

Creating sessions with increased verbosity

When creating a CFS session using the API or CLI, there are several different parameters that may be specified. The following table shows the appropriate argument or field to use in order to specify the Ansible configuration, limit, or verbosity.

If no Ansible configuration is directly specified, the session will use the default Ansible configuration.

Parameter	CLI	API
Ansible configuration	`--ansible-config`	`ansibleConfig`
Ansible limit	`--ansible-limit`	`ansibleLimit`
Ansible verbosity	`--ansible-verbosity`	`ansibleVerbosity`

Increasing verbosity for sessions that are not created directly

Not all CFS sessions are created directly by an administrator. For example:

A session may be created indirectly (as part of a script being run, for example).
A session may be created by the CFS batcher. For more information, see Configuration Management with the CFS Batcher.

In these cases, an administrator is not able to directly specify these parameters using the method described in the previous section. However, these sessions will run using the default Ansible configuration. Any parameters specified in this Ansible configuration will be used in these automatic or indirectly-created CFS sessions. In particular, this is where an administrator is able to specify an Ansible verbosity level for these sessions. For more details, see Set the ansible.cfg for a Session.