archive - Creates a compressed archive of one or more files or trees¶

New in version 2.3.

Synopsis
Parameters
Notes
Examples
Return Values
Status
Maintenance
- Author

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. `=` operator is assumed as default, otherwise `+` or `-` operators need to be included in the string. 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 add a leading zero so that Ansible's YAML parser knows it is an octal number (like `0644` or `01777`) or quote it (like `'644'` or `'1777'`) 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 bool	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 bool (added in 2.2)	Choices: no ← yes	By default this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, but sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example is docker mounted files, which cannot be updated atomically from inside the container and can only be written in an unsafe manner. This option allows Ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files when atomic operations fail (however, it doesn't force Ansible to perform unsafe writes). IMPORTANT! Unsafe writes are 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.

Maintenance ¶

This module is flagged as community which means that it is maintained by the Ansible Community. See Module Maintenance & Support for more info.

For a list of other modules that are also maintained by the Ansible Community, see here.

Author ¶

Ben Doherty (@bendoh)

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