How to check if a file exists in Ansible

Question

I have to check whether a file exists in  etc   If the file exists then I have to skip the task  Here is the code I am using  - name  checking the file exists   command  touch file txt   when      -s  etc file txt

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vars    mypath    etc file txt   tasks    - name  checking the file exists     command  touch file txt     when  mypath is not exists

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How to check if a file exists in Ansible using when condition      Below is the ansible play i used to remove the file when the file exists in the OS end    - name  find out  etc init d splunk file exists or not        stat          path   etc init d splunk       register  splunkresult       tags          - always      - name   Remove splunk from init d file if splunk already running        file          path   etc init d splunk         state  absent       when  splunkresult stat exists    true       ignore errors  yes       tags          - always   I have used play condition as like below   when  splunkresult stat exists    true -- gt  Remove the file   you can give true false based on your requirement  when  splunkresult stat exists    false when  splunkresult stat exists    true

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If you just want to make sure a certain file exists  f ex  because it shoud be created in a different way than via ansible  and fail if it doesn t  then you can do this   - name  sanity check that  some path file exists   command  stat  some path file   check mode  no   always run   changed when  false   doesn t change anything

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In general you would do this with the stat module  But the command module has the creates option which makes this very simple   - name  touch file   command  touch  etc file txt   args      creates   etc file txt   I guess your touch command is just an example  Best practice would be to not check anything at all and let ansible do its job - with the correct module  So if you want to ensure the file exists you would use the file module   - name  make sure file exists   file      path   etc file txt     state  touch

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You can use Ansible stat module to register the file  and when module to apply the condition   - name  Register file       stat          path    tmp test file        register  file path  - name  Create file if it doesn t exists       file           path    tmp test file          state  touch       when  file path stat exists    False

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A note on relative paths to complement the other answers  When doing infrastructure as code I m usually using roles and tasks that accept relative paths  specially for files defined in those roles  Special variables like playbook dir and role path are very useful to create the absolute paths needed to test for existence

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Discovered that calling stat is slow and collects a lot of info that is not required for file existence check  After spending some time searching for solution  i discovered following solution  which works much faster   - raw  test -e  path to something  amp  amp  echo true    echo false   register  file exists  - debug  msg  Path exists    when  file exists    true

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I find it can be annoying and error prone to do a lot of these  stat exists type checks  For example they require extra care to get check mode  --check   working   Many answers here suggest   get and register apply when register expression is true    However  sometimes this is a code smell so always look for better ways to use Ansible  specifically there are many advantages to using the correct module  e g   - name  install ntpdate   package      name  ntpdate   or  - file      path   etc file txt     owner  root     group  root     mode  0644   But when it is not possible use one module  also investigate if you can register and check the result of a previous task  e g     jmeter version  4 0  - name  Download Jmeter archive   get url      url   http   archive apache org dist jmeter binaries apache-jmeter-   jmeter version    tgz      dest    opt jmeter apache-jmeter-   jmeter version    tgz      checksum  sha512 eee7d68bd1f7e7b269fabaf8f09821697165518b112a979a25c5f128c4de8ca6ad12d3b20cd9380a2b53ca52762b4c4979e564a8c2ff37196692fbd217f1e343   register  download result  - name  Extract apache-jmeter   unarchive      src    opt jmeter apache-jmeter-   jmeter version    tgz      dest    opt jmeter       remote src  yes     creates    opt jmeter apache-jmeter-   jmeter version       when  download result state     file    Note the when  but also the creates  so --check doesn t error out  I mention this because often these less-than-ideal practices come in pairs i e  no apt yum package so we have to 1  download and 2  unzip  Hope this helps

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This can be achieved with the stat module to skip the task when file exists   - hosts  servers   tasks    - name  Ansible check file exists      stat        path   etc issue     register  p   - debug        msg   File exists         when  p stat exists   - debug        msg   File not found      when  p stat exists    False

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You can first check that the destination file exists or not and then make a decision based on the output of its result       tasks        - name  Check that the somefile conf exists         stat            path   etc file txt         register  stat result        - name  Create the file  if it doesnt exist already         file            path   etc file txt           state  touch         when  not stat result stat exists

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The stat module will do this as well as obtain a lot of other information for files   From the example documentation   - stat  path  path to something   register  p  - debug  msg  Path exists and is a directory    when  p stat isdir is defined and p stat isdir

[ansible] How to check if a file exists in Ansible?

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