EX294 Manage task execution and roles Practice Question
A playbook contains a task that uses the 'until' keyword with a retry count of 5 and a delay of 10. The task fails on all 5 attempts. What is the default behavior of Ansible regarding this task and subsequent tasks?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that retries imply eventual success or that a failed retry loop is automatically ignored, but Ansible treats exhausted retries as a standard task failure.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The task fails, and the playbook stops executing on that host by default.
When a task with 'until' exhausts its retries, it fails. Ansible's default behavior is to stop executing further tasks on that host, preventing subsequent actions that might depend on the failed task's success. The play continues on other hosts unless any_errors_fatal is set.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The task is skipped, and the playbook continues with subsequent tasks.
Why it's wrong here
A task that fails after retries is not skipped; it is a failure. Skipped tasks occur when a when condition is false or when check mode prevents execution. Here, the task executed and failed, so Ansible reports a failure and halts the host's play unless error handling is configured.
- ✗
The task failure is ignored, and the playbook continues.
Why it's wrong here
Failures are not ignored by default. To ignore a failure, you must explicitly set ignore_errors: true on the task. Without that, the host is removed from the play after the failure. This default ensures that errors are not silently overlooked, which is important for reliable automation.
- ✓
The task fails, and the playbook stops executing on that host by default.
Why this is correct
When a task with 'until' exhausts all retries, it is marked as failed. By default, Ansible stops executing further tasks on that host, unless ignore_errors or failed_when is used. This prevents subsequent tasks from running on a host where a critical operation did not succeed. The play continues on other hosts unless any_errors_fatal is set.
- ✗
The task is retried indefinitely until it succeeds.
Why it's wrong here
The 'until' keyword requires a retry count; if omitted, the default is 3. Here, retries is set to 5, so the task stops after 5 attempts. It does not retry indefinitely. Infinite retries would require an extremely high retries value and would generally be a poor practice, risking hangs.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This EX294 question is part of Courseiva's 392-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Red Hat exam blueprint
This EX294 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Red Hat certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the EX294 exam.