diff --git a/tasks/cloud_setup_basic.yml b/tasks/cloud_setup_basic.yml
index af3e07ec1a..6404f5128a 100644
--- a/tasks/cloud_setup_basic.yml
+++ b/tasks/cloud_setup_basic.yml
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
 
 - name: enable the service
   action: service name=ntpd state=running enabled=true
-  when: not ansible_cmdline.ostree
+  when: ansible_cmdline.ostree is not defined
 
 #- name: edit hostname to be instance name - prefix hostbase var if it exists
 #  action: shell hostname  {{ hostbase }}`curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id`
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@
 - name: update all
   command: dnf -y update creates=/etc/sysconfig/global-update-applied
   register: updated
-  when: ansible_distribution_major_version > '21' and not ansible_cmdline.ostree
+  when: ansible_distribution_major_version > '21' and ansible_cmdline.ostree is not defined
   tags:
   - packages