Line breaks are excluded when copying a file from ansible linux host to windows server using win_copy

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1

I am copying some text files located on a linux file system to windows file system using the win_copy module of Ansible. The final copied file do not have line breaks in it.

So the file which is like this on linux:

line1
line2
line3

Becomes this on windows:
line1line2line3

How can i make sure win_copy just copy the file exactly as it is ?

2

My guess is you are hitting the difference between what linux and windows considers a line ending.

linux is happy with \n

windows wants \r\n

if you run

od -cx yourfile

you will probably only see \n

if the file was originally created on a windows machine, in say, Notepad, then it will get the \r\n line endings.

I suggest you do the following:

edit the file in Notepad on a windows machine.
use the fetch module to copy it from the windows machine to your ansible controller
use od -cx to check it has windows line endings
the file from windows should now copy across unmodified when using win_copy

Hope this helps,

Jon

3

Hi Ishan,

As mentioned previously, the file has not changed, just that Windows and Linux expect different line endings.

This is what worked for me using Powershell, converting Linux line-endings to Windows line-endings:

  • name: convert line endings from Linux to Windows (PowerShell)

win_shell: ‘(Get-Content “filename_from”) -replace “n", "r`n” | Set-Content “filename_to.txt”’

The reason I needed to do this was that I was checking out text files on Linux, then copying them to a Windows server.

it automatically ensures files have the “right” line-endings during checkout (meaning “right” for the machine doing the checkout, not the machine the file’s copied to.)

Cheers,

Nick