Ansible: copy a directory content to another directory

ansible ansible-2.x
Asier Gomez picture Asier Gomez · Feb 18, 2016 · Viewed 173.2k times · Source

I am trying to copy the content of dist directory to nginx directory.

- name: copy html file
  copy: src=/home/vagrant/dist/ dest=/usr/share/nginx/html/

But when I execute the playbook it throws an error:

TASK [NGINX : copy html file] **************************************************
fatal: [172.16.8.200]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "attempted to take checksum of directory:/home/vagrant/dist/"}

How can I copy a directory that has another directory and a file inside?

Answer

Aidan Feldman picture Aidan Feldman · Aug 28, 2017

You could use the synchronize module. The example from the documentation:

# Synchronize two directories on one remote host.
- synchronize:
    src: /first/absolute/path
    dest: /second/absolute/path
  delegate_to: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"

This has the added benefit that it will be more efficient for large/many files.

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