Ansible code to restart Apache

Question

I have a basic playbook to restart an Apache server but I'm wondering how the following command is interpreted and converted to its equivalent -- service httpd start .

- name: ensure apache is running
    service:
      name: httpd
      state: started

Answer 1

service module first gets the status of the service (httpd). If the service is started or running or reloaded and the desired service state is started , it will not restart the service.

self.svc_change = False
...
...
if not self.running and self.state in ["started", "running", "reloaded"]:
    self.svc_change = True

If you want to restart:

state: restarted   ==>  service httpd restart

service - Manage services

• started/stopped are idempotent actions that will not run commands unless necessary
• restarted will always bounce the service
• reloaded will always reload