Unable to run the role without enabling and starting the promtail service

[rplevka]

I'm trying to use the tags to only perform promtail installation, without having the defined systemd service enabled or started
(using promtail_install tags).

The problem is, that the tasks responsible for defining the systemd service and promtail config (that are tagged by promtail_install) notify a handler, that enables and (re)starts the service (regardless of being tagged).

Looks like this is a current ansible limitation.
The workaround might be to use when clauses around the tasks and handler that would check some variable, e.g. promtail_service_start

my use case:
I'm including this role in a play, that creates an OSP instance image. I need the promtail to be ready but not started/enabled, as users will pass their custom enable_promtail flag together with their own scrape configs.

[patrickjahns]

I've been thinking through this - especially in terms of using the role in the build process of VM images. Your proposal makes sense - would you be up for creating a PR.
It would be great, if you could create a test-case in https://github.com/patrickjahns/ansible-role-promtail/tree/master/molecule so that your scenario run is covered in the future

[rplevka]

Hi,
thank you for considering this. Unfortunately my time to work on this is quite limited, I had to provide a solution in our project, so I actually decided to write my own, separate roles to handle this (install, deploy).

I can't promise anything, but I'll try to get something together (after I do a bit of studying around molecule).