Using Ansible Conditionals Copy Files

Question : The Nautilus DevOps team discussed how they can train different team members to use Ansible for different automation tasks. There are numerous ways to perform a particular task using Ansible, but we want to utilize each aspect Ansible offers. to the team wants to utilise Ansible's conditionals to perform the following task:

An inventory file is already placed under /home/thor/ansible on jump host, with all the Stratos DC app servers included.

Create a playbook /home/thor/ansible/playbook.yml and make sure to use Ansible's when conditionals statements to perform the following tasks.

Copy blog.txt file present under /usr/src/dba directory on jump host to App Server 1 under /opt/dba directory. Its user and group owner must be user tony and its permissions must be 0777 .

Copy story.txt file present under /usr/src/dba directory on jump host to App Server 2 under /opt/dba directory. Its user and group owner must be user steve and its permissions must be 0777 .

Copy media.txt file present under /usr/src/dba directory on jump host to App Server 3 under /opt/dba directory. Its user and group owner must be user banner and its permissions must be 0777 .

NOTE: You can use ansible_nodename variable from gathered facts with when condition. Additionally, please make sure you are running the play for all hosts i.e use - hosts: all.

Note: Validation will try to run playbook using command ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml, so please make sure playbook works this way, without passing any extra arguments.

Please Note :-  Perform the below commands based on your question  server,  user name & other details might differ . So please read task carefully before executing. All the Best 👍

Solution:  

1. At first ansible inventory file is working properly and doesn't have any file exist from jump server to all the app server's      

thor@jump_host /$ cd /home/thor/ansible/ thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ ll total 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 thor thor  36 Jun 21 07:24 ansible.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 thor thor 237 Jun 21 07:24 inventory thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ ansible all -a "ls -ltr /opt/dba" -i inventory stapp02 | FAILED | rc=2 >> ls: cannot access /opt/dba: No such file or directorynon-zero return code stapp01 | FAILED | rc=2 >> ls: cannot access /opt/dba: No such file or directorynon-zero return code stapp03 | FAILED | rc=2 >> ls: cannot access /opt/dba: No such file or directorynon-zero return code thor@jump_host ~/ansible$

2.  If you see above output then create playbook file   ( refer video for more details )

thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ vi playbook.yml - name: Copy text files to Appservers   hosts: all   become: yes   tasks:     - name: Copy blog.txt to stapp01       ansible.builtin.copy:         src: /usr/src/dba/blog.txt         dest: /opt/dba/         owner: tony         group: tony         mode: "0755"       when: inventory_hostname == "stapp01"     - name: Copy story.txt to stapp02       ansible.builtin.copy:         src: /usr/src/dba/story.txt         dest: /opt/dba/         owner: steve         group: steve         mode: "0755"       when: inventory_hostname == "stapp02"     - name: Copy media.txt to stapp03       ansible.builtin.copy:         src: /usr/src/dba/media.txt         dest: /opt/dba/         owner: banner         group: banner         mode: "0755"       when: inventory_hostname == "stapp03"

3.  Post file saved , run below command to execute the playbook        

thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml   PLAY [Copy text files to Appservers] **********************************************************************   TASK [Gathering Facts] ************************************************************************************ ok: [stapp02] ok: [stapp03] ok: [stapp01]   TASK [Copy blog.txt to stapp01] *************************************************************************** skipping: [stapp03] skipping: [stapp02] changed: [stapp01]   TASK [Copy story.txt to stapp02] ************************************************************************** skipping: [stapp01] skipping: [stapp03] changed: [stapp02]   TASK [Copy media.txt to stapp03] ************************************************************************** skipping: [stapp01] skipping: [stapp02] changed: [stapp03]   PLAY RECAP ************************************************************************************************ stapp01                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=2    rescued=0    ignored=0   stapp02                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=2    rescued=0    ignored=0   stapp03                    : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=2    rescued=0    ignored=0     thor@jump_host ~/ansible$

4.  Validate the task by below command 

thor@jump_host ~/ansible$ ansible all -a "ls -ltr /opt/dba" -i inventory stapp03 | CHANGED | rc=0 >> -rwxr-xr-x 1 banner banner 22 Jun 21 07:43 /opt/dba stapp02 | CHANGED | rc=0 >> total 4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 steve steve 27 Jun 21 07:43 story.txt stapp01 | CHANGED | rc=0 >> total 4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 tony tony 35 Jun 21 07:43 blog.txt thor@jump_host ~/ansible$

5.  Click on Finish & Confirm to complete the task successful

Happy Learning!!!!

Apart from this if you need more clarity,  I have made a  tutorial video on this , please go through and share your comments. Like and share the knowledge