Looping through a dictionary to create links

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hello the list,

I have a bunch of machines with some shared file systems. Some of the file systems are not mounted on all the machines. For the filesystems that are mounted, I’d like to check/create a bunch of symbolic links to those filesystems from various places in the filesystem. Some filesystems do not have links (yet) but we may do some other things with them later.

So given a YAML inventory file:

all:
vars:
filesystems:
/sharedfs1:

  • source: /sharedfs1/filesets/home
    target: /home
  • source: /sharedfs1/filesets/foo
    target: /opt/foo
  • source: /sharedfs1/filesets/baa
    target: /opt/baa
  • source: /sharedfs1/filesets/lmod
    target: /opt/lmod
  • source: /scale_wlg_persistent/filesets/baz
    target: /quack/baz
    /sharedfs2:
  • source: /sharedfs2/filesets/scratch
    target: /quack/scratch
    /sharedfs3:
    /sharedfs4:
    children:
    hostlist:
    hosts:
    host1:

host2:

And the following play, which checks the mount point exists

2

The Python equivalent I’m trying to make is:

for sharedfs in filesystems:
if os.path.exists(sharedfs):
for link in filesystems[sharedfs]:
os.symlink(link[‘source’]. link[‘target’])

3

Well, I have a solution but it’s very https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7053458-but-i-am-very-poorly-today-very-stupid

I’ve had to restructure the inventory:

all:
vars:
filesystems:

  • path: /sharedfs1
    links:
  • src: /sharedfs1/filesets/home
    dest: /home
  • src: /sharedfs1/filesets/foo
    dest: /opt/foo
  • src: /sharedfs1/filesets/baa
    dest: /opt/baa
  • src: /sharedfs1/filesets/lmod
    dest: /opt/lmod
  • src: /sharedfs1/filesets/baz
    dest: /quack/baz
  • path: /sharedfs2
    links:
  • src: /sharedfs2/filesets/nobackup
    dest: /quack/nobackup
  • path: /sharefds3
  • path: /sharedfs4
    children:
    hostlist:
    hosts:
    host1:
    host2:

And then the playbook looks like, which does a bit more should/shouldn’t testing than initially asked for