The following is my yaml file for a ansible configuration of a cisco device. In /etc/ansible/hosts I have also edited the hosts file to reflect my Amazon EC2 Ami instance as can be seen below

[ec2-instances]

ec2-54-152-72-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Inventory file ^

YAML File Below

---

-  hosts: ec2-54-152-72-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com

   gather_facts: false

   connection: local



   tasks:

    -name:  Customer IOS Upgrade Initial Discovery

    cli_command: "{{ show }}"



    vars: 

      show:

       - show run

       - show version

       - show interface status

       - show license





    -mail: 

      host: smtp.gmail.com

      port: 587

      username: sample@gmail.com

      password: sample2

      to: sample@sample.com

      subject: '{{ ansible_hostname }} configuration' 

      body: 'System {{ ansible_hostname }} has been successfully discovered.'

      delegate_to: localhost



    save_when: changed   

...

I get the following error message when trying to run the following. Any idea why this is happening? I have switched out what is seen in the initial .yaml file provided with [ec2-instances] and there is still no difference in runtime result.

ansible-playbook -i /etc/ansible/hosts test2.yml --user ec2-user --private-key=/home/adam/Desktop/EC2CSR1000v.pem -vvv

ansible-playbook 2.7.9

  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

  configured module search path = [u'/home/adam/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']

  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible

  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible-playbook

  python version = 2.7.15rc1 (default, Nov 12 2018, 14:31:15) [GCC 7.3.0]

Using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file

/etc/ansible/hosts did not meet host_list requirements, check plugin documentation if this is unexpected

/etc/ansible/hosts did not meet script requirements, check plugin documentation if this is unexpected

Parsed /etc/ansible/hosts inventory source with ini plugin

ERROR! A malformed block was encountered while loading tasks



The error appears to have been in '/etc/ansible/scripts/test2.yml': line 2, column 4, but may

be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.



The offending line appears to be:



---

-  hosts: [ec2-instance]

   ^ here

That document is valid YAML, but that doesn't mean it is what ansible expects.
Your keys -name and -mail look suspiciously like a malformed sequence consisting of a mapping, which would require a space between the dash and the following character.

Looking at the exmample here that indeed seems to be the case. And you should IMO also format your YAML consistently, instead of starting with 3 indent sequence entry (- hosts) with no offset for the dash, then 3 indent sequence entry (- show run) with offset for the dash. That makes it much harder to visually determine potential errors in your YAML file. Just always use 2 indent with no offset for the dash.

Now it is completely unclear whether instead of your

   tasks:

    -name:  Customer IOS Upgrade Initial Discovery

    cli_command: "{{ show }}"



    vars: 

This should was meant:

   tasks:

   - name:  Customer IOS Upgrade Initial Discovery

     cli_command: "{{ show }}"



     vars: 

or this

   tasks:

   - name:  Customer IOS Upgrade Initial Discovery

     cli_command: "{{ show }}"



   vars: 

All three are valid YAML, but not necessarily interpretable by ansible