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Tim Fletcher
Asked: 2016-11-13 14:05:14 +0800 CST

Matching end of file with ansible lineinfile

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I'm trying to replicate the following sed snippet in ansible's lineinfile module.

sed -i '/# The named pipe \/dev\/xconsole/,$d' /etc/rsyslog.conf

I know that I can template the file or brute force match the lines but I'd like to learn how to do the sed trick of matching to end of file with ansible. I am also aware the matching blindly to the end of the file isn't great practice either.

This was lifted from this blog post: https://blog.dantup.com/2016/04/removing-rsyslog-spam-on-raspberry-pi-raspbian-jessie/

The aim is to fix this error in rsyslog:

raspberrypi rsyslogd-2007: action 'action 17' suspended, next retry is Sat Apr  2 01:24:21 2016 [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2007 ]

This error is caused by section at the end the config file /etc/rsyslog.conf

# The named pipe /dev/xconsole is for the `xconsole' utility.  To use it,
# you must invoke `xconsole' with the `-file' option:
# 
#    $ xconsole -file /dev/xconsole [...]
#
# NOTE: adjust the list below, or you'll go crazy if you have a reasonably
#      busy site..
#
daemon.*;mail.*;\
    news.err;\
    *.=debug;*.=info;\
    *.=notice;*.=warn   |/dev/xconsole
regex sed rsyslog ansible

1 Answers

  1. Your sed command truncates a file, whereas the lineinfile module "will search a file for a line, and ensure that it is present or absent. This is primarily useful when you want to change a single line in a file only" (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/lineinfile_module.html).

    copy or template still sounds like the best alternative here.

    If you want to play around with lineinfile, your ssh server configuration is usually a good start.

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