Posted on

Copy all files with Ansible Copy

I wanted to copy all files in a directory, but didn’t want to create a “with_items” because I am lazy.

The solution is to use “with_fileglob” which can use wildcards and thus select multiple files.

## Example
- name: Copying certificates to tmp
  copy:
    src: "{{ item }}"
    dest: /tmp
    owner: apache
    group: apache
    mode: 0600
  with_fileglob:
    - "files/tmp/*"

This will copy all files in the tmp folder to the client.

Ps. Another option is to use synchronize, but you need rsync on the host and client which is why I prefer copy.

Posted on

Ansible – Continue nicely when shell exits with error

Sometimes a command gives an exit code which isn’t considered an error in your playbook. You could use “ignore_errors” but it will stand out when you run your playbook, and it’s the first thing new colleagues point out when we run a play together.

This example shows you how to use the exit code in a when clause without ansible throwing (and catching) the exception.

- name: Check if md5sum of the current  is the same
  shell: 'md5sum --check /install/md5sum_of_installer'
  register: installer_md5sum_check
  failed_when: ( installer_md5sum_check.rc not in [ 0, 1 ] )

- name: Run Installer if md5sum is different or missing
  include_role:
    name: my_install_role
  when: installer_md5sum_check.rc == 1
  ## rc 0: the md5sum output was "OK", thus was already installed
  ## rc 1: it was not the same (or the file was missing)

- name: Create md5sum for the installer
  shell: 'md5sum /install/my_installer.zip > /install/md5sum_of_installer'
  when: installer_md5sum_check.rc == 1
  ## We can only arrive here when the installer role was successfully finished