Documentation

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.

Parameters

Parameter
Choices/Defaults
Comments
attributes
(added in 2.3)
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
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)
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to exclude from the archive
format
    Choices:
  • bz2
  • gz ←
  • tar
  • xz
  • zip
The type of compression to use.
Support for xz was added in version 2.5.
group
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
mode
Mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers. You must either specify the leading zero so that Ansible's YAML parser knows it is an octal number (like 0644 or 01777) or quote it (like '644' or '0644' so Ansible receives a string and can do its own conversion from string into number. Giving Ansible a number without following one of these rules will end up with a decimal number which will 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
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
path
required
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to compress or archive.
remove
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Remove any added source files and trees after adding to archive.
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
Role part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
setype
Type part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
seuser
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)
    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.

Notes

Note

  • requires tarfile, zipfile, gzip and bzip2 packages on target host
  • requires lzma or backports.lzma if using xz format
  • can produce gzip, bzip2, lzma and zip compressed files or archives

Examples

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

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

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

- name: 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

- name: 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

- name: Create a bz2 archive of a globbed path, while excluding a glob of dirnames
  archive:
    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, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key
Returned
Description
archived
list
success
Any files that were compressed or added to the archive.
arcroot
string
always
The archive root.
expanded_exclude_paths
list
always
The list of matching exclude paths from the exclude_path argument.
expanded_paths
list
always
The list of matching paths from paths argument.
missing
list
success
Any files that were missing from the source.
state
string
always
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.


Status

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

Author

  • Ben Doherty (@bendoh)

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