local_actions: copy contents from stdout issue...LARGE file?

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1

Hi,

I am using the ‘copy content’ module to grab the contents of a file from an old version of F5 (where the copy / fetch module doesn’t work due to simplejson not being available)

Here is an extract play I have put together:

  • name: “Backup BigIP v10 Config”
    raw: ‘!/bin/bash -c “cat /config/bigip.conf”’
    register: bigip10
  • local_action: copy content=“{{ bigip10.stdout }}” dest=“/path/here/{{ inventory_hostname }}.bigip.conf”

…and this is working for the most part except when the file is LARGE.

The problem is one of the files I want to grab is around 5000 lines and I get the following ‘no descriptive’ error:

TASK [copy] ********************************************************************
task path: /path/to/playbooks/f5_backups.yml:10
fatal: [XXXXX-XX]: FAILED! => {
“failed”: true,
“msg”: "{‘stderr’: u’', ‘stdout’:

The only thing I can think is that this must be some sort of buffer error as if I grab a smaller file from the same device - it works a treat.

Before anyone suggests that I need to use the fetch module - I have tried this and it fails with: (even though it says successful!)

XXXXX-XX| SUCCESS => {
“changed”: false,
“file”: “/config/bigip.conf”,
“msg”: “unable to calculate the checksum of the remote file”
}

Oh and the ansible version we are running is 2.2.1.0

Any ideas how to get to the bottom of / solve this will be gratefully received!

Thanks in advance!

2

If the equipment support sftp, scp, ftp or some other transfer protocol maybe just use that.

3

Thanks…Whilst it does support those protocols, we cannot use those due to being unable to do password-less logins via SSH keys. Also, we can only connect to these devices on those protocols - we cannot go outbound from these devices to other servers.

I have managed to script this in raw ansible commands I was kind of hoping we could use Ansible playbooks to make this more manageable in the future.