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 | |
backrefs bool |
| Used with state=present . If set, line can contain backreferences (both positional and named) that will get populated if the regexp matches. This flag changes the operation of the module slightly; insertbefore and insertafter will be ignored, and if the regexp doesn't match anywhere in the file, the file will be left unchanged. If the regexp does match, the last matching line will be replaced by the expanded line parameter. |
backup bool |
| Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly. |
create bool |
| Used with state=present . If specified, the file will be created if it does not already exist. By default it will fail if the file is missing. |
firstmatch bool (added in 2.5) |
| Used with insertafter or insertbefore . If set, insertafter and inserbefore find a first line has regular expression matches. |
group | Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown. | |
insertafter |
| Used with state=present . If specified, the line will be inserted after the last match of specified regular expression. If the first match is required, use(firstmatch=yes). A special value is available; EOF for inserting the line at the end of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, EOF will be used instead. If regular expressions are passed to both regexp and insertafter , insertafter is only honored if no match for regexp is found. May not be used with backrefs . |
insertbefore |
| Used with state=present . If specified, the line will be inserted before the last match of specified regular expression. If the first match is required, use(firstmatch=yes). A value is available; BOF for inserting the line at the beginning of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, the line will be inserted at the end of the file. If regular expressions are passed to both regexp and insertbefore , insertbefore is only honored if no match for regexp is found. May not be used with backrefs . |
line | Required for state=present . The line to insert/replace into the file. If backrefs is set, may contain backreferences that will get expanded with the regexp capture groups if the regexp matches. | |
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 ). | |
others | All arguments accepted by the file module also work here. | |
owner | Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown. | |
path required | The file to modify. Before 2.3 this option was only usable as dest, destfile and name. aliases: dest, destfile, name | |
regexp (added in 1.7) | The regular expression to look for in every line of the file. For state=present , the pattern to replace if found. Only the last line found will be replaced. For state=absent , the pattern of the line(s) to remove. Uses Python regular expressions. See http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html.aliases: regex | |
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. | |
state |
| Whether the line should be there or not. |
unsafe_writes bool (added in 2.2) |
| 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. |
validate | 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. |
Note
# Before 2.3, option 'dest', 'destfile' or 'name' was used instead of 'path' - lineinfile: path: /etc/selinux/config regexp: '^SELINUX=' line: 'SELINUX=enforcing' - lineinfile: path: /etc/sudoers state: absent regexp: '^%wheel' # Searches for a line that begins with 127.0.0.1 and replaces it with the value of the 'line' parameter - lineinfile: path: /etc/hosts regexp: '^127\.0\.0\.1' line: '127.0.0.1 localhost' owner: root group: root mode: 0644 - lineinfile: path: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf regexp: '^Listen ' insertafter: '^#Listen ' line: 'Listen 8080' - lineinfile: path: /etc/services regexp: '^# port for http' insertbefore: '^www.*80/tcp' line: '# port for http by default' # Add a line to a file if the file does not exist, without passing regexp - lineinfile: path: /tmp/testfile line: '192.168.1.99 foo.lab.net foo' create: yes # Fully quoted because of the ': ' on the line. See the Gotchas in the YAML docs. - lineinfile: path: /etc/sudoers state: present regexp: '^%wheel\s' line: '%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL' # Yaml requires escaping backslashes in double quotes but not in single quotes - lineinfile: path: /opt/jboss-as/bin/standalone.conf regexp: '^(.*)Xms(\\d+)m(.*)$' line: '\1Xms${xms}m\3' backrefs: yes # Validate the sudoers file before saving - lineinfile: path: /etc/sudoers state: present regexp: '^%ADMIN ALL=' line: '%ADMIN ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL' validate: '/usr/sbin/visudo -cf %s'
This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.
This module is flagged as core which means that it is maintained by the Ansible Core Team. See Module Maintenance & Support for more info.
For a list of other modules that are also maintained by the Ansible Core Team, see here.
For more information about Red Hat’s support of this module, please refer to this Knowledge Base article
Hint
If you notice any issues in this documentation you can edit this document to improve it.
© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.7/modules/lineinfile_module.html