Ansible copy files with wildcard?

Question

In my files directory I have various files, with a similar name structure:

data-example.zip data-precise.zip data-arbitrary.zip data-collected.zip

I would like to transfer all of these files in the /tmp directory of my remote machine using Ansible without specifying each file name explicitly. In other words I would like to transfer every file that stars with "data-".

What is the correct way to do that? In a similar thread, someone suggested the with_fileglob keyword, - but I couldn't get that to work. Can someone provide me an example on how to accomplish said task?

elchusco · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-28 11:17:26Z

51

Method 1: Find all files, store them in a variable and copy them to destination.

- hosts: lnx tasks: - find: paths="/source/path" recurse=yes patterns="data*" register: files_to_copy - copy: src={{ item.path }} dest=/dear/dir owner: root mode: 0775 with_items: "{{ files_to_copy.files }}"

Use remote_src: yes to copy file in remote machine from one path to another.

Ansible documentation

Method 2: Fileglob

Fileglob allows using patterns to match files and directories

- name: Copy each file over that matches the given pattern copy: src: "{{ item }}" dest: "/etc/fooapp/" owner: "root" mode: 0600 with_fileglob: - "/playbooks/files/fooapp/*"

Ansible documentation

edited May 28, 2023 at 11:17

elchusco

33 bronze badges

answered May 31, 2020 at 13:07

deepanmurugan

2,14316 silver badges19 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

6 Comments

Kyu96 Over a year ago

Thanks for the reply. It seems that with_fileglob is suitable for most cases. However I don't think there is a way to do this kinda pattern matching directly on the remote machine? (For example if you want to copy all files that match the pattern from one place on the remote machine to another place on the remote machine?

deepanmurugan Over a year ago

Is the source and destination path both on remote machine?

Kyu96 Over a year ago

By default I assume the src path always refers to the local machine, not to the remote.

deepanmurugan Over a year ago

Yes source path refers to the local. You want to copy files from remote machine A to remote machine A or remote machine A to remote machine B?

robe007 Over a year ago

with_fileglob is used to copy files from the ansible server to the remote server. If you want to copy files inside the remote server, you need to use the first method.

|

Kyu96 · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-31 13:00:07Z

Shortly after posting the question I actually figured it out myself. The with_fileglob keyword is the way to do it.

- name: "Transferring all data files" copy: src: "{{ item }}" dest: /tmp/ with_fileglob: "data-*"

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Ansible copy files with wildcard?

2 Answers 2

6 Comments

Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

6 Comments

Comments

Linked

Related