b64decode returning wrong results in slurp

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,
I am using the slurp module to retrieve and decode a binary file. However, I am getting wrong output with binary starting with 1F EF BD instead of what I have in a decoded file with other tools: 1F 8B 08

  • name: Read backup file content
    slurp:
    src: “/tmp/{{ file }}”
    register: slurp_result
    delegate_to: localhost

  • name: Define file content
    set_fact:
    content: “{{slurp_result.content | b64decode }}”

Any idea what could be the issue?
Thanks
Karim

2

The filter b64decode doesn't support binary data, only ASCII.

Since you are getting the file from localhost you can use lookup plugin file.

{{ lookup('file', '/tmp/' ~ file) }}

3

Hi Olstad,
Thanks for your quick answer.

I have tried the lookup before and it throws some error related to utf-8. That is why I had to use slurp.
Indeed, the file to decode is a .gz file which is received through SCP in a base64 encoded format.
“msg”: “An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin ‘file’. Error was a <type ‘exceptions.UnicodeDecodeError’>, original message: ‘utf8’ codec can’t decode byte 0x8b in position 1: invalid start byte”
Regards
Karim

4

Can you just run shell or command module with "base64 -d" on the file.