archive – Creates a compressed archive of one or more files or trees

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
string
The attributes the resulting 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.
The = operator is assumed as default, otherwise + or - operators need to be included in the string.

aliases: attr
dest
path
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
list
added in 2.4
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to exclude from the archive.
force_archive
boolean
added in 2.8
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Allow you to force the module to treat this as an archive even if only a single file is specified.
By default behaviour is maintained. i.e A when a single file is specified it is compressed only (not archived).
format
string
    Choices:
  • bz2
  • gz ←
  • tar
  • xz
  • zip
The type of compression to use.
Support for xz was added in Ansible 2.5.
group
string
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
mode
string
The permissions the resulting file or directory should have.
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 Ansible 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).
As of Ansible 2.6, the mode may also be the special string preserve.
When set to preserve the file will be given the same permissions as the source file.
owner
string
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
path
list / required
Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to compress or archive.
remove
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Remove any added source files and trees after adding to archive.
selevel
string
Default:
"s0"
The level part of the SELinux file context.
This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range.
When set to _default, it will use the level portion of the policy if available.
serole
string
The role part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the role portion of the policy if available.
setype
string
The type part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the type portion of the policy if available.
seuser
string
The user part of the SELinux file context.
By default it uses the system policy, where applicable.
When set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.
unsafe_writes
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Influence when to use atomic operation to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target file.
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.

See Also

See also

unarchive – Unpacks an archive after (optionally) copying it from the local machine
The official documentation on the unarchive module.

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

- name: Use gzip to compress a single archive (i.e don't archive it first with tar)
  archive:
    path: /path/to/foo/single.file
    dest: /path/file.gz
    format: gz

- name: Create a tar.gz archive of a single file.
  archive:
    path: /path/to/foo/single.file
    dest: /path/file.tar.gz
    format: gz
    force_archive: true

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

Authors

  • Ben Doherty (@bendoh)

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