Why does fabric report “No hosts found”?

Question

env.roledefs = {
    'seed': ['host1'],
    'peer': ['host2']
}

@roles('seed')
def test():
    pass

@roles('peer')
def test1():
    pass

def deploy():
    test()
    test1()

fab test, fab test1 - all ok

fab deploy:

No hosts found. Please specify (single) host string for connection:

Why ?

Answer 1

When calling test and test1 from deploy , the @roles are not taken into account. You should call the functions using execute(test) and execute(test1) .

See also:

• http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.4.0/api/core/tasks.html#fabric.tasks.execute
• http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.4.0/usage/execution.html#intelligently-executing-tasks-with-execute

Answer 2

Because env.hosts is not set. Your test() functions do not use run() or any similar command that requires ssh connection, while deploy(), presumably, does().

Read these first:

http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.0.1/usage/env.html#hosts

http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.0.1/usage/execution.html#hosts