Ansible Role: blockinfile

This role contains no tasks, but provides blockinfile module which might be useful when you want to maintain multi-line snippets in config files in /etc.

Ansible Galaxy Page: https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/1475

Request for review: The pull request to ansible-modules-extras has been made to include blockinfile module in the official distribution of Ansible, which enables you to use blockinfile as a standard module without this role!

If you use this module and feel it's useful, please leave some endorsement comments on the PR. I greatly appreciate if you're an eligible reviewer (existing module author) and could take some time to review the PR, otherwise if you could ask reviewers of your acquiaintance for the review. It needs two +1 votes from reviewers in order to be nominated for inclusion.

blockinfile Module

This module will insert/update/remove a block of multi-line text surrounded by the marker lines.

Example task:

- blockinfile:
    dest: /etc/network/interfaces
    block: |
      iface eth0 inet static
          address 192.168.0.1
          netmask 255.255.255.0

Text inserted/updated by the task in /etc/network/interfaces:

# BEGIN ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.0.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
# END ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK

It uses marker lines # {BEGIN/END} ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK as default. You can specify alternative marker lines by marker option when you need to update files in other formats like HTML, or run multiple blockinfile tasks on the same file.

Options

If this section doesn't show nicely in Ansible Galaxy Page, please refer to equivalent in GitHub Page.

parameter	required	default	choices	comments
backup	no	no	yes no	Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
block	no			The text to insert inside the marker lines. If it's missing or an empty string, the block will be removed as if state were specified to absent. aliases: content
create	no	no	yes no	Create a new file if it doesn't exist.
dest	yes			The file to modify. aliases: name, destfile
follow (added in 1.8)	no	no	yes no	This flag indicates that filesystem links, if they exist, should be followed.
group	no			name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown
insertafter	no	EOF	EOF *regex*	If specified, the block will be inserted after the last match of specified regular expression. A special value is available; EOF for inserting the block at the end of the file. If specified regular expresion has no matches, EOF will be used instead.
insertbefore	no		BOF *regex*	If specified, the block will be inserted before the last match of specified regular expression. A special value is available; BOF for inserting the block at the beginning of the file. If specified regular expresion has no matches, the block will be inserted at the end of the file.
marker	no	# {mark} ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK		The marker line template. "{mark}" will be replaced with "BEGIN" or "END".
mode	no			mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers (like 0644). Leaving off the leading zero will likely 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	no			name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown
selevel	no	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	no			role part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
setype	no			type part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.
seuser	no			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
state	no	present	present absent	Whether the block should be there or not.
validate	no	None		The validation command to run before copying into place. The path to the file to validate is passed in via '%s' which must be present as in the example below. The command is passed securely so shell features like expansion and pipes won't work.

Examples

- name: insert/update "Match User" configuation block in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  blockinfile:
    dest: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    block: |
      Match User ansible-agent
      PasswordAuthentication no

- name: insert/update eth0 configuration stanza in /etc/network/interfaces
        (it might be better to copy files into /etc/network/interfaces.d/)
  blockinfile:
    dest: /etc/network/interfaces
    block: |
      iface eth0 inet static
          address 192.168.0.1
          netmask 255.255.255.0

- name: insert/update HTML surrounded by custom markers after <body> line
  blockinfile:
    dest: /var/www/html/index.html
    marker: "<!-- {mark} ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK -->"
    insertafter: "<body>"
    content: |
      <h1>Welcome to {{ansible_hostname}}</h1>
      <p>Last updated on {{ansible_date_time.iso8601}}</p>

- name: remove HTML as well as surrounding markers
  blockinfile:
    dest: /var/www/html/index.html
    marker: "<!-- {mark} ANSIBLE MANAGED BLOCK -->"
    content: ""

Requirements

None.

Role Variables

None.

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

Complete playbook that makes SSH password authentication for specific user prohibited, then restarts sshd if needed.

---
- hosts: all
  remote_user: ansible-agent
  sudo: yes
  roles:
    - yaegashi.blockinfile
  tasks:
    - name: Prohibit SSH password authentication for $SUDO_USER
      blockinfile:
        dest: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        backup: yes
        content: |
          Match User {{ansible_env.SUDO_USER}}
          PasswordAuthentication no
      notify: Restart sshd
  handlers:
    - name: Restart sshd
      service
        name: ssh
        state: restarted

License

GPLv3+

Author Information

YAEGASHI Takeshi