An Ansible Journey 10: Managing Files

This post deals with two methods of managing files with Ansible. We will perform a copy operation, and a pull a compressed file from the internet, and deploy it to rocky-1 (our Ansible host). 

1. Deploy a file to an Ansible Target

We will add the following play inside our hosts: webservers block:

  - name: Deploy Website Landing Page
    tags: nginx,web,rocky
    copy:
      src: /opt/repository/web/landing_page.html
      dest: /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html
      owner: root
      group: root
      mode: 0644
 

The copy module is used to copy files. When configuring this section, you will want to set the src, dest, owner, group, and mode directives to ensure you're pulling the correct file, and when you place it, it has the correct ownership and permissions to be read by Nginx. Not in the example that the source and destination do not need to be the same filename. 

2. Install a Utility from a Compressed Archive

First, our ansible host is not in our inventory file. Even though this is where Ansible runs, it cannot act as an ansible target unless it is in the inventory file. We simply add the following to the end of the inventory file:

[workstations]
192.168.5.249

Next, we'll update our site.yml file to perform the actions we want. Here are the changes:

- hosts: workstations
  become: true
  tasks:

  - name: Install unzip Package
    tags: workstations
    package:
      name: unzip

  - name: Install TerraForm
    tags: workstations
    unarchive:
      src: https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.11.4/terraform_1.11.4_linux_amd64.zip
      dest: /usr/local/bin
      remote_src: yes
      mode: 0755
      owner: root
      group: root

The first section (in blue) starts a new section that applies only to workstations. (There's nothing special here with respect to a workstation versus a server. The host I'm, rocky-1 on is a Rocky Linux server, but I'm also working on it as if it were my workstation.)

The Install unzip Package section (in orange) ensures we have the unzip package available, as the package we're installing is actually a .zip file. Like the samba package earlier in the tutorial,  the unzip package has the same name, so we can use the package directive instead of dnf. One important note here. If you are referring back to the learnlinux.tv videos, you'll notice that the author does not add the "tags: workstations" line to this block. I expect there was a change in Ansible functionality between the time his videos were recorded and this tutorial was written, as I needed to add this directive in order to get the block to be executed.

The final section (in green) pulls the TerraForm file from Hashicorp's website and decompresses it into the /usr/local/bin directory. It is the unarchive module that manages selecting the utility (unzip) to use. Once complete, you can (as root) issue an updatedb command on the Ansible host followed by:

locate terraform_1.11.4_linux_amd64.zip

to confirm that there is no .zip file leftover after the block completes. The remote_src: directive tells Ansible that the file we are pulling does not exist on the local host. (Note that it was not required in the copy module above, as the source file to be copied was on the same host as Ansible.) One additional note regarding the "hosts: workstations" block. It must be added either at the bottom of the file, or directly above another hosts block. Adding this hosts section in between two unrelated plays from another hosts section will cause errors because Ansible will think that you want the actions to take place in the parent host section. Bottom line: don't try to nest hosts blocks.

 

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