What s the easy way to auto create non existing dir in ansible

Question

In my Ansible playbook many times i need to create file there   - name  Copy file    template       src  code conf j2      dest     project root   conf code conf    now many times conf dir is not there  Then I have to create more task to create that dir first   Is there any easy way to auto create dir if don t exist with some option

User · Answer

copy module creates the directory if it s not there  In this case it created the resolved conf d directory  - name  put fallback dns conf in place                                                                    copy                                                                                                      src  fallback dns conf                                                                                  dest   etc systemd resolved conf d                                                                      mode   0644                                                                                             owner  root                                                                                             group  root                                                                                           become  true                                                                                            tags  testing

User · Answer

To ensure success with a full path use recurse yes  - name  ensure custom facts directory exists     file   gt        path  etc ansible facts d       recurse yes       state directory

User · Answer

AFAIK  the only way this could be done is by using the state directory option  While template module supports most of copy options  which in turn supports most file options  you can not use something like state directory with it  Moreover  it would be quite confusing  would it mean that   project root   conf code conf is a directory   or would it mean that   project root   conf  should be created first   So I don t think this is possible right now without adding a previous file task   - file       path     project root   conf      state  directory     recurse  yes

User · Answer

you can create the folder using the following depending on your ansible version   Latest version 2 lt   - name  Create Folder   file      path     project root   conf     recurse  yes    state  directory   Older version   - name  Create Folder   file         path    project root   conf        recurse  yes       state directory   Refer - http   docs ansible com ansible latest file module html

User · Answer

According to the latest document when state is set to be directory  you don t need to use parameter recurse to create parent directories  file module will take care of it   - name  create directory with parent directories   file      path   data test foo     state  directory   this is fare enough to create the parent directories data and test with foo  please refer the parameter description -  state  http   docs ansible com ansible latest modules file module html

User · Answer

Right now  this is the only way  - name  Ensures   project root   conf dir exists   file  path   project root   conf state directory - name  Copy file   template      src  code conf j2     dest     project root   conf code conf

User · Answer

If you are running Ansible    2 0 there is also the dirname filter you can use to extract the directory part of a path  That way you can just use one variable to hold the entire path to make sure both tasks never get out of sync   So for example if you have playbook with dest path defined in a variable like this you can reuse the same variable   - name  My playbook   vars      dest path   home ubuntu some dir some file txt   tasks       - name  Make sure destination dir exists       file          path      dest path   dirname             state  directory         recurse  yes        now this task is always save to run no matter how dest path get s changed arround     - name  Add file or template to remote instance       template           src  foo txt j2         dest      dest path

[ansible] What's the easy way to auto create non existing dir in ansible

Examples related to ansible