synchronize - A wrapper around rsync to make common tasks in your playbooks quick and easy.

• Synopsis
• Parameters
• Notes
• Examples
• Status
• Maintenance
  • Support
  • Author

Synopsis

• synchronize is a wrapper around rsync to make common tasks in your playbooks quick and easy. It is run and originates on the local host where Ansible is being run. Of course, you could just use the command action to call rsync yourself, but you also have to add a fair number of boilerplate options and host facts. synchronize is not intended to provide access to the full power of rsync, but does make the most common invocations easier to implement. You still may need to call rsync directly via command or shell depending on your use case.

Parameters

Notes

Examples

- name: Synchronization of src on the control machine to dest on the remote hosts
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path

- name: Synchronization using rsync protocol (push)
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path/
    dest: rsync://somehost.com/path/

- name: Synchronization using rsync protocol (pull)
  synchronize:
    mode: pull
    src: rsync://somehost.com/path/
    dest: /some/absolute/path/

- name:  Synchronization using rsync protocol on delegate host (push)
  synchronize:
    src: /some/absolute/path/
    dest: rsync://somehost.com/path/
  delegate_to: delegate.host

- name: Synchronization using rsync protocol on delegate host (pull)
  synchronize:
    mode: pull
    src: rsync://somehost.com/path/
    dest: /some/absolute/path/
  delegate_to: delegate.host

- name: Synchronization without any --archive options enabled
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    archive: no

- name: Synchronization with --archive options enabled except for --recursive
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    recursive: no

- name: Synchronization with --archive options enabled except for --times, with --checksum option enabled
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    checksum: yes
    times: no

- name: Synchronization without --archive options enabled except use --links
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    archive: no
    links: yes

- name: Synchronization of two paths both on the control machine
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Synchronization of src on the inventory host to the dest on the localhost in pull mode
  synchronize:
    mode: pull
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path

- name: Synchronization of src on delegate host to dest on the current inventory host.
  synchronize:
    src: /first/absolute/path
    dest: /second/absolute/path
  delegate_to: delegate.host

- name: Synchronize two directories on one remote host.
  synchronize:
    src: /first/absolute/path
    dest: /second/absolute/path
  delegate_to: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"

- name: Synchronize and delete files in dest on the remote host that are not found in src of localhost.
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    delete: yes
    recursive: yes

# This specific command is granted su privileges on the destination
- name: Synchronize using an alternate rsync command
  synchronize:
    src: some/relative/path
    dest: /some/absolute/path
    rsync_path: "su -c rsync"

# Example .rsync-filter file in the source directory
# - var       # exclude any path whose last part is 'var'
# - /var      # exclude any path starting with 'var' starting at the source directory
# + /var/conf # include /var/conf even though it was previously excluded

- name: Synchronize passing in extra rsync options
  synchronize:
    src: /tmp/helloworld
    dest: /var/www/helloworld
    rsync_opts:
      - "--no-motd"
      - "--exclude=.git"

# Hardlink files if they didn't change
- name: Use hardlinks when synchronizing filesystems
  synchronize:
    src: /tmp/path_a/foo.txt
    dest: /tmp/path_b/foo.txt
    link_dest: /tmp/path_a/

# Specify the rsync binary to use on remote host and on local host
- hosts: groupofhosts
  vars:
        ansible_rsync_path: "/usr/gnu/bin/rsync"

  tasks:
    - name: copy /tmp/localpath/ to remote location /tmp/remotepath
      synchronize:
        src: "/tmp/localpath/"
        dest: "/tmp/remotepath"
        rsync_path: "/usr/gnu/bin/rsync"

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 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.

Support

For more information about Red Hat’s support of this module, please refer to this Knowledge Base article

Author

• Timothy Appnel (@tima)