If you are moving files between computers then you may be doing this by transferring the files to a physical medium (e.g. a USB pen drive), via email or via scp. However, there are other options including Ansible which has two modules to help, Copy and Fetch.
Copy
The Copy module can be used to copy files to a remote destination i.e. copying a configuration file to several remote hosts at the same time.
- name: Copy File To Pi4
copy:
src: test_file_to_copy.txt
dest: /home/pi/test_file_to_copy.txt
- name: Copy File To Pi4 and Backup Original On Pi4
copy:
src: topsecret.txt
dest: /home/pi/topsecret.txt
backup: yes
My example shows two of the options available with the Copy module. The first requires:
- a source (src) which can be just the filename if the file exists in the same directory as the playbook, or can include a file path if needed
- a destination (dest) which is where the file will be saved on the remote host
Note: You may need to use the become: option if you are saving to an area that requires higher privileges to write to.
The second example includes the backup: option. If the file being copied already exists on the remote server (i.e. where the file is being copied to) then this option renames the file on the remote server and copies the file from the ansible machine to the remote server.
Copy also has options for setting the files permissions whilst copying.
Fetch
Fetch is the opposite of Copy, as it fetches files from remote servers to the computer running Ansible.
- name: Fetch A File From Pi4
fetch:
src: /home/pi/info.txt
dest: info.txt
More Information:
To find out more about Copy and Fetch please visit the official documentation on the Ansible website:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/copy_module.html
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/fetch_module.html
