Ansible is a piece of software, and software breaks; it's not a matter of if, but when. Invalid input, improper assumptions, and unexpected environments are all things that can lead to a frustrating situation when tasks and plays are not performing as expected. Introspection and debugging are troubleshooting techniques that can quickly turn frustration into elation when a root cause is discovered.

In this chapter, we learned about how to get Ansible to log its actions to a file, and how to change the verbosity level of Ansible's output. We then learned how to inspect variables to ensure their values are in line with your expectations, before we moved on to debugging Ansible code in detail. Furthermore, we walked through the process of inserting breakpoints into core Ansible code, and executed both local and remote Python debugging sessions using standard Python tools.

In the next chapter, we will learn how to extend the functionality of Ansible by writing our own modules, plugins, and inventory sources.