win_wait_for_process – Waits for a process to exist or not exist before continuing

New in version 2.7.

Synopsis

• Waiting for a process to start or stop.

• This is useful when Windows services behave poorly and do not enumerate external dependencies in their manifest.

Parameters

Parameter	Choices/Defaults	Comments
owner string		The owner of the process. Requires PowerShell version 4.0 or newer.
pid integer		The PID of the process.
post_wait_delay integer	Default: 0	Seconds to wait after checking for processes.
pre_wait_delay integer	Default: 0	Seconds to wait before checking processes.
process_min_count integer	Default: 1	Minimum number of process matching the supplied pattern to satisfy present condition. Only applies to present.
process_name_exact list		The name of the process(es) for which to wait. The name of the process(es) should not include the file extension suffix.
process_name_pattern string		RegEx pattern matching desired process(es).
sleep integer	Default: 1	Number of seconds to sleep between checks. Only applies when waiting for a process to start. Waiting for a process to start does not have a native non-polling mechanism. Waiting for a stop uses native PowerShell and does not require polling.
state string	Choices: absent present ←	When checking for a running process present will block execution until the process exists, or until the timeout has been reached. absent will block execution until the process no longer exists, or until the timeout has been reached. When waiting for present, the module will return changed only if the process was not present on the initial check but became present on subsequent checks. If, while waiting for absent, new processes matching the supplied pattern are started, these new processes will not be included in the action.
timeout integer	Default: 300	The maximum number of seconds to wait for a for a process to start or stop before erroring out.

See Also

See also

wait_for – Waits for a condition before continuing

The official documentation on the wait_for module.

win_wait_for – Waits for a condition before continuing

The official documentation on the win_wait_for module.

Examples

- name: Wait 300 seconds for all Oracle VirtualBox processes to stop. (VBoxHeadless, VirtualBox, VBoxSVC)
  win_wait_for_process:
    process_name_pattern: 'v(irtual)?box(headless|svc)?'
    state: absent
    timeout: 500

- name: Wait 300 seconds for 3 instances of cmd to start, waiting 5 seconds between each check
  win_wait_for_process:
    process_name_exact: cmd
    state: present
    timeout: 500
    sleep: 5
    process_min_count: 3

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key		Returned	Description
elapsed float		always	The elapsed seconds between the start of poll and the end of the module. Sample: 3.14159265
matched_processes complex		always	List of matched processes (either stopped or started).
	name string	always	The name of the matched process. Sample: svchost
	owner string	when supported by PowerShell	The owner of the matched process. Sample: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
	pid integer	always	The PID of the matched process. Sample: 7908

Status

• This module is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface. [preview]

• This module is maintained by the Ansible Community. [community]

Authors

• Charles Crossan (@crossan007)

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