Use Ansible to report which systems need to reboot

February 1, 2017 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I created this cronjob using an Ansible playbook to see if any of the Ansible managed hosts are up too long or have a newer kernel installed than the one running. This gives us a monthly overview to see which machines should be rebooted. This script is only valid for RPM and Red Hat based systems. Please adapt root on the end of the cron line to match the e-mail address you want to send your report to and make sure the system mail service is configured correctly.

/etc/cron.d/uptime-and-kernel-upgrade-report

# Send a report mail every month with the ansible managed hosts that have an uptime equal or higher than 300 days OR have a newer kernel installed than the one running
0 0 1 * * sysauto /usr/bin/flock -x -n /opt/systems/ansible -c 'cd /opt/systems/ansible/ ; ansible-playbook playbooks/systems/check_uptime_and_kernel_upgrade.yml | grep " has " | sed -e "s/^[ \t]*//" | mail -E -s "Monthly report: Systems that need a reboot" root'

check_uptime_and_kernel_upgrade.yml

- hosts: all
 tasks:
 - name: "Check for machines that have an uptime that exceeds 300 days"
 shell: echo "$(hostname) has been up for $(uptime | cut -d ',' -f 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 4) days"
 when: ansible_uptime_seconds > 25920000
 register: uptime_exceeded
 - name: "Check for machines that aren't running the latest installed kernel"
 shell: LAST_KERNEL=$(rpm -q --last kernel | perl -pe 's/^kernel-(\S+).*/$1/' | head -1);CURRENT_KERNEL=$(uname -r);test $LAST_KERNEL = $CURRENT_KERNEL || echo "$(hostname) has a newer kernel installed than the one running"
 ignore_errors: true
 register: reboot_hint
 - debug: var=uptime_exceeded.stdout_lines
 - debug: var=reboot_hint.stdout_lines