assemble - Assembles a configuration file from fragments

Synopsis

  • Assembles a configuration file from fragments. Often a particular program will take a single configuration file and does not support a conf.d style structure where it is easy to build up the configuration from multiple sources. assemble will take a directory of files that can be local or have already been transferred to the system, and concatenate them together to produce a destination file. Files are assembled in string sorting order. Puppet calls this idea fragments.

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
attributes
(added in 2.3)
 Default:
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
backup
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Create a backup file (if yes), including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
decrypt
(added in 2.4)
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes
Default:
Yes
This option controls the autodecryption of source files using vault.
delimiter
(added in 1.4)
A delimiter to separate the file contents.
dest
required
A file to create using the concatenation of all of the source files.
group Default:
None
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
ignore_hidden
(added in 2.0)
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
A boolean that controls if files that start with a '.' will be included or not.
mode Default:
None
Mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers (like 0644 or 01777). 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 Default:
None
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
regexp
Assemble files only if regex matches the filename. If not set, all files are assembled. All "\" (backslash) must be escaped as "\\" to comply yaml syntax. Uses Python regular expressions; see http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html.
remote_src
(added in 1.4)
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
If False, it will search for src at originating/master machine, if True it will go to the remote/target machine for the src. Default is True.
selevel Default:
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 Default:
None
Role part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
setype Default:
None
Type part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
seuser Default:
None
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.
src
required
An already existing directory full of source files.
unsafe_writes
(added in 2.2)
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
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.
validate
(added in 2.0)
The validation command to run before copying into place. The path to the file to validate is passed in via '%s' which must be present as in the sshd example below. The command is passed securely so shell features like expansion and pipes won't work.

Examples

# Example from Ansible Playbooks
- assemble:
    src: /etc/someapp/fragments
    dest: /etc/someapp/someapp.conf

# When a delimiter is specified, it will be inserted in between each fragment
- assemble:
    src: /etc/someapp/fragments
    dest: /etc/someapp/someapp.conf
    delimiter: '### START FRAGMENT ###'

# Copy a new "sshd_config" file into place, after passing validation with sshd
- assemble:
    src: /etc/ssh/conf.d/
    dest: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    validate: '/usr/sbin/sshd -t -f %s'

Status

This module is flagged as stableinterface which means that the maintainers for this module guarantee that no backward incompatible interface changes will be made.

Support

For more information about Red Hat’s support of this module, please refer to this Knowledge Base article

Author

  • Stephen Fromm (@sfromm)

Hint

If you notice any issues in this documentation you can edit this document to improve it.

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2019 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.5/modules/assemble_module.html