Best practice for making temporary file accessible to task

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1

I need to run a command that needs to consume a file for its configuration. What would be the best practice for cases like this where a temporary file needs to be copied remotely and then deleted after a certain task has executed.

Is copying these files to Ansible’s remote_tmp a recommended practice? If so, how can that be achieved (I tried using {{ remote_tmp }} in my task but it didn’t seem to work), and will the file be cleaned up automatically once the playbook finishes running?

Thanks in advance for any input regarding this question.
–Pedro.

2

The remote temp location is not made available as a variable, nor is it appropriate as it applies only during the lifetime of a single task.

I would probably run ‘mktemp’ via ‘shell’ and register the result, and then clean it up with a final task to using “file: name={{ mktemp.stdout }} state=absent”

There are probably other nice solutions.

3

Thanks Michael. It clarifies the issue for me and it’s solid suggestion.

–Pedro.