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Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.10.30

What are the built-in inventory groups all and ungrouped?

Ansible always creates them: all contains every host in the inventory, ungrouped contains every host that belongs to no other group.

You never declare them, yet you can target them:

  • ansible all --list-hosts lists the whole inventory. In the lab inventory with servera to serverd that gives four hosts.
  • ansible ungrouped --list-hosts shows hosts that were listed outside any [group] section. When every host has a group, the answer is the warning "No hosts matched, nothing to do" and hosts (0).

So every host is always in at least two groups: all plus either ungrouped or one or more real groups. ungrouped is a handy sanity check: a host that shows up there was probably meant to be filed under a group and was forgotten.

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From Quiz: ITIA / Ansible Inventory, Configuration and Playbooks | Updated: Oct 30, 2026