cannot stat command with * and `

Archives Ansible Project
1

I am trying to rename folder that is unpacked. So I can only get file name accurately with grep (or some sort of regex expression)

via ansible, the following command fails with the error message: stderr: mv: cannot stat /var/www/ls /var/www/ | grep client`': No such file or directory

command mv “/var/www/ls /var/www/ | grep client” “/var/www/gd_new”

however, exact command works just fine when executed on server

I try to use mv “var/www/client*” “/var/www/gd_new”, with xargs with pipe… all end up with similar error…

any guidance would be appreciated.

2

can you show the play/tasks involved?

3

yes this is the task. only “mv” fails…

  • name: example_client | download archived dist, unpack and cleanup
    command: “{{item}}”
    with_items:
  • curl -H “Authorization:token {{ git_token }}” -L -o /var/www/example.zip “https://api.github.com/repos/user/example_client/zipball/gh-pages”
  • unzip /var/www/example.zip -d /var/www
  • mv “/var/www/ls /var/www/ | grep client” “/var/www/example_new”
    tags:
  • deploy
4

Substitute "command" by "shell". The shell module allows to do piping, backticks, globs, etc.. The command module does not do any of those things and can only be used for a single static command line.

5

Yes, you need to use the shell module. However, much of this can be refactored.

curl should probably use the “get_url” module, etc.

There’s also the “unarchive” module, so you could do a local play to download the contents to the Ansible control machine and follow that up with unarchive to avoid the download happening on every host.

6

Dag, Michael,
Thank you, that solved the issue.