archive - Creates a compressed archive of one or more files or trees.

New in version 2.3.

Synopsis

  • Packs an archive. It is the opposite of unarchive. By default, it assumes the compression source exists on the target. It will not copy the source file from the local system to the target before archiving. Source files can be deleted after archival by specifying remove=True.

Options

parameter required default choices comments
attributes
(added in 2.3)
 no None
Attributes the file or directory should have. To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system. This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr.
aliases: attr
dest
 no
The file name of the destination archive. This is required when path refers to multiple files by either specifying a glob, a directory or multiple paths in a list.
exclude_path
(added in 2.4)
 no
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to exclude from the archive
format
 no gz
  • gz
  • bz2
  • zip
The type of compression to use.
group
 no
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
mode
 no
Mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers (like 0644). Leaving off the leading zero will likely have unexpected results. As of version 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).
owner
 no
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
path
 yes
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to compress or archive.
remove
 no
Remove any added source files and trees after adding to archive.
selevel
 no s0
Level part of the SELinux file context. This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range. _default feature works as for seuser.
serole
 no
Role part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
setype
 no
Type part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
seuser
 no
User part of SELinux file context. Will default to system policy, if applicable. If set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.
unsafe_writes
(added in 2.2)
 no
  • yes
  • no
Normally this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example are docker mounted files, they cannot be updated atomically and can only be done in an unsafe manner.
This boolean option allows ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files for those cases in which you do not have any other choice. Be aware that this is subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.

Examples

# Compress directory /path/to/foo/ into /path/to/foo.tgz
- archive:
    path: /path/to/foo
    dest: /path/to/foo.tgz

# Compress regular file /path/to/foo into /path/to/foo.gz and remove it
- archive:
    path: /path/to/foo
    remove: True

# Create a zip archive of /path/to/foo
- archive:
    path: /path/to/foo
    format: zip

# Create a bz2 archive of multiple files, rooted at /path
- archive:
    path:
        - /path/to/foo
        - /path/wong/foo
    dest: /path/file.tar.bz2
    format: bz2

# Create a bz2 archive of a globbed path, while excluding specific dirnames - archive:
    path:
        - /path/to/foo/*
    dest: /path/file.tar.bz2
    exclude_path:
        - /path/to/foo/bar
        - /path/to/foo/baz
    format: bz2

# Create a bz2 archive of a globbed path, while excluding a glob of dirnames
    path:
        - /path/to/foo/*
    dest: /path/file.tar.bz2
    exclude_path:
        - /path/to/foo/ba*
    format: bz2

Return Values

Common return values are documented here Return Values, the following are the fields unique to this module:

name description returned type sample
archived
Any files that were compressed or added to the archive.
 success list
arcroot
The archive root.
 always string
expanded_exclude_paths
The list of matching exclude paths from the exclude_path argument.
 always list
expanded_paths
The list of matching paths from paths argument.
 always list
missing
Any files that were missing from the source.
 success list
state
The current state of the archived file. If 'absent', then no source files were found and the archive does not exist. If 'compress', then the file source file is in the compressed state. If 'archive', then the source file or paths are currently archived. If 'incomplete', then an archive was created, but not all source paths were found.
 always string

Notes

Note

  • requires tarfile, zipfile, gzip, and bzip2 packages on target host
  • can produce gzip, bzip2 and zip compressed files or archives

Status

This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.

For help in developing on modules, should you be so inclined, please read Community Information & Contributing, Testing Ansible and Developing Modules.

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2019 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.4/archive_module.html