--- - name: start tomcat service: name=tomcat state=started - name: wait for tomcat to start completely shell: while sleep 2; do grep -m 1 'Server startup in [0-9]\+ ms$' {{root_dir}}/logs/catalina.out && break; done - name: link /dev/null to catalina.out shell: cd {{root_dir}}/logs/ && rm -f catalina.out && ln -sf /dev/null catalina.out