Forgive me for responding to myself... I just hope that someone in the future might find this relevant/useful.
added "changed_when: false" to the shell task. That took care of the idempotent issue I was seeing by overriding the change result. Still plugging away on the other issue - name: Disabling NetworkManager in ifcfg-* files lineinfile: path: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/{{path_files.stdout_lines}} regexp: '^NM_CONTROLLED' line: "NM_CONTROLLED=no" The above is now returning: TASK [dns_update : Disabling NetworkManager in ifcfg-* files] **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** fatal: [ansibletest-rhel7]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "Destination /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/[u'ifcfg-bond0', u'ifcfg-eth0', u'ifcfg-eth1', u'ifcfg-eth2', u'ifcfg-eth3', u'ifcfg-eth4', u'ifcfg-eth5', u'ifcfg-lo'] does not exist !", "rc": 257} fatal: [ansibletest-rhel6]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "Destination /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/[u'ifcfg-bond0', u'ifcfg-eth0', u'ifcfg-eth1', u'ifcfg-eth2', u'ifcfg-eth3', u'ifcfg-eth4', u'ifcfg-eth5', u'ifcfg-lo'] does not exist !", "rc": 257} fatal: [ansibletest-oel6]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "Destination /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/[u'ifcfg-bond0', u'ifcfg-eth0', u'ifcfg-eth1', u'ifcfg-eth2', u'ifcfg-eth3', u'ifcfg-eth4', u'ifcfg-eth5', u'ifcfg-lo'] does not exist !", "rc": 257} Notice the ifcfg* names are messed up. I am trying to narrow down the reason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ansible Project" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ansible-project+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to ansible-project@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/e77a3ea6-5cc6-442e-812e-46fc7ad2bdb7%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.