AnsibleByExample

community.windows 3.3.0 Released - Whats New and How to Test

Beginner
2024-01-013By Luca Berton

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Ansible Foundations to Production — full curriculum
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  2. 2. Installing and Configuring Ansible
  3. 3. Running Ad-Hoc Commands
  4. 4. Writing Your First Playbook
  5. 5. Understanding and Using Modules
  6. 6. Variables and Facts
  7. 7. Conditionals and Loops
  8. 8. Handlers and Idempotency
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  10. 10. Inventory Management
  11. 11. Using Ansible Vault for Secrets
  12. 12. Debugging and Troubleshooting
  13. 13. Real-World Automation Examples
  14. 14. Final Project: Deploy a Web Server
  15. 15. Bonus - What's Next with Ansible?
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Introduction

community.windows is the Ansible collection that provides Windows-specific modules and plugins not included in ansible.windows, covering areas such as scheduled tasks, PowerShell module management, LAPS password retrieval, and psexec-based connections. Version 3.3.0 has been published on Ansible Galaxy and brings performance improvements to win_psmodule_info, a fix for win_psmodule module status lookups, and a fix for win_scheduled_task when running as SYSTEM.

Whats New

Minor Changes

  • win_psmodule_info - Added the include_properties parameter, allowing fine-grained control over which module properties are returned. This improves performance when only specific properties are needed (PR #688).
  • win_psmodule_info - Added the skip_module_repository_info parameter to skip querying PowerShellGet for repository-related metadata (PR #688).
  • win_psmodule_info - The module now automatically skips expensive PowerShellGet repository lookups when include_properties is specified without repository-related properties (PR #688).

Bugfixes

  • win_psmodule - Now retrieves the installation status of the requested module only, instead of all modules, which was expensive on hosts with many modules installed (PR #688).
  • win_psmodule_info - Fixed a documentation typo, changing procoessor_architecture to processor_architecture.
  • laps_password - Migrated away from the deprecated to_text methods to the new public API.
  • psexec - Migrated away from the deprecated to_text methods to the new public API.
  • win_scheduled_task - Fixed an issue when creating a new scheduled task while using become_user: SYSTEM (issue #633).

Affected Components

ComponentTypeChange
win_psmodule_infoModuleNew parameters include_properties, skip_module_repository_info; doc typo fix
win_psmoduleModuleFaster single-module status lookup
win_scheduled_taskModuleFix for become_user: SYSTEM task creation
laps_passwordModuleInternal to_text API migration
psexecConnection pluginInternal to_text API migration

How to Test

Install or upgrade the collection from Ansible Galaxy and confirm the version installed.

ansible-galaxy collection install community.windows --upgrade
ansible-galaxy collection list community.windows

Verify that win_psmodule_info accepts the new parameters:

ansible-doc community.windows.win_psmodule_info | grep -A2 include_properties
ansible-doc community.windows.win_psmodule_info | grep -A2 skip_module_repository_info

For users affected by the win_scheduled_task issue, test creating a scheduled task with become_user: SYSTEM against a Windows host and confirm the task is created without error.

Conclusion

community.windows 3.3.0 focuses on performance for PowerShell module inventory tasks and resolves a real-world issue with scheduled task creation under the SYSTEM account. Users relying on win_psmodule_info in inventory or facts-gathering playbooks against hosts with many installed modules should upgrade to benefit from the reduced execution time, and anyone using become_user: SYSTEM with win_scheduled_task should apply this update.

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