Using a list with lineinfile throws an undefined variable error

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1

Hi all,

I have tried all that I could think about this, but I wasn’t able to use a list inside a lineinfile call. This is my task code:

`

  • name: php.ini hardening
    lineinfile:
    dest=/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
    regexp=“{{ item.regexp }}”
    line=“{{ item.line }}”
    backrefs=yes
    with_items:
  • php_ini_settings
    `

And this is an example list:

`

roles/php-fpm/vars/main.yml

2

There are a couple of things going on here, but the end solution I believe is going to be:

with_items: php_ini_settings

What you are doing is creating a list of lists, and php_ini_settings is being treated as a string. Since php_ini_settings is already a list, just use the line I referenced above.

3

Thanks for your answer Matt, but unfortunately it hasn’t worked :(.

`

  • name: Setting log level in development
    lineinfile:
    dest=/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
    regexp=“{{ item.regexp }}”
    line=“{{ item.line }}”
    backrefs=yes
    with_items: php_ini_settings
    `

`
fatal: [192.168.33.9] => One or more undefined variables: ‘str object’ has no attribute ‘regexp’

`

4

From the sound of it, either that variable doesn’t exist or for some reason it isn’t being expanded.

You could try adding a task above that one to inspect it:

  • debug: var=php_ini_settings

You might also try:

with_items: “{{ php_ini_settings }}”

But you really shouldn’t need to. The error you are getting is saying that the data it is looping over is a string, and not a dict/hash.

5

Thanks a lot Matt, the debug command was enough to find the problem. After including it in the playbook I found this:

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/encodings/utf_8.py", line 16, in decode return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xa0' in position 2: ordinal not in range(128)

So, it seems that my dictionary had an invisible character there making the variable unusable. Thanks a lot Matt, you made my day ;)!!!

6

Hi,

… not really answering to the initial question, but why wouldn’t you use the ini_file module?

Fred

7

I simply didn´t know about it, but I think I will use it for sure ;).