Interactive Commands via Ansible

[0xkevin]

Hi all, I am struggling to find documentation or a module that will help me resolve this issue that I am experiencing.

The requirement - I am SSHing into a Cisco IOS device and need to run one command that is interactive.

Example of how to do it manually (I removed the values for variables for clarity):

TEST-ROUTER# copy tftp://{{ tftp_server }}/{{ filename }} bootflash://{{ filename }} vrf {{number}}
Destination filename [XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.crt]? XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.crt
Accessing tftp://XX.XX.XX.XX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.crt…
Loading XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.crt from XX.XX.XX.XX (via Sdwan-system-intf): !
[OK - 5280 bytes]
5280 bytes copied in 2.639 secs (1989 bytes/sec)

So as you can see, after providing the command “copy tftp://{{ tftp_server }}/{{ filename }} bootflash://{{ filename }} vrf {{number}}”, the system prompts for the destination filename which is simply the filename passed.

I have attempted using the ansible .builtin.expect and .ios.ios_command, however, the ansible playbook continues to timeout on the first command “copy tftp://{{ tftp_server }}/{{ filename }} bootflash://{{ filename }} vrf {{number}}”.

Here is the task that is failing:

- name: Push certificate via TFTP if certificate is not present
  when: dir_check.stdout is not defined or filename not in (dir_check.stdout[0] | default(''))
  cisco.ios.ios_command:
    commands:
      - "copy tftp://{{ tftp_server }}/{{ filename }} bootflash://{{ filename }} vrf 1"
      - "{{ filename }}"
  register: copy_output

[gundalow]

Can you provide the output of ansible-playbook -vvv ... when you run this.

Have you see the Network prompt guide

Though a cleaner solution might be to use the net_put module to copy the file onto the destination. You might need a task before that to copy from the tftp server to the machine running Ansible, unless it’s available as a network mount somewhere.

[0xkevin]

Hi @gundalow,

Thank you for this documentation. When using the ‘ansible.netcommon.cli_command’, it is working.

The final product looks as such:

- name: Push certificate via TFTP if certificate is not present
  when: dir_check.stdout is not defined or filename not in (dir_check.stdout[0] | default(''))
  ansible.netcommon.cli_command:
    command: "copy tftp://{{ tftp_server }}/{{ filename }} bootflash://{{ filename }} vrf 1"
    prompt: "Destination filename.*"
    answer: '{{ filename }}'
  register: copy_output

[gundalow]

Glad it’s working, can you please mark my the solution post as “solved”, so it will help others in the future. Thanks