ansible.builtin.expect module – Executes a command and responds to prompts
Note
This module is part of ansible-core
and included in all Ansible
installations. In most cases, you can use the short
module name
expect
even without specifying the collections keyword.
However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.expect
for easy linking to the
module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have
the same module name.
Synopsis
The ansible.builtin.expect module executes a command and responds to prompts.
The given command will be executed on all selected nodes. It will not be processed through the shell, so variables like
$HOME
and operations like"<"
,">"
,"|"
, and"&"
will not work.
Requirements
The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.
python >= 2.6
pexpect >= 3.3
Parameters
Parameter |
Comments |
---|---|
Change into this directory before running the command. |
|
The command module takes command to run. |
|
A filename, when it already exists, this step will not be run. |
|
Whether or not to echo out your response strings. Choices:
|
|
A filename, when it does not exist, this step will not be run. |
|
Mapping of expected string/regex and string to respond with. If the response is a list, successive matches return successive responses. List functionality is new in 2.1. |
|
Amount of time in seconds to wait for the expected strings. Use Default: |
Attributes
Attribute |
Support |
Description |
---|---|---|
Support: none |
Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target |
|
Support: none |
Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode |
|
Platform: posix |
Target OS/families that can be operated against |
Notes
Note
If you want to run a command through the shell (say you are using
<
,>
,|
, and so on), you must specify a shell in the command such as/bin/bash -c "/path/to/something | grep else"
.The question, or key, under
responses
is a python regex match. Case insensitive searches are indicated with a prefix of?i
.The
pexpect
library used by this module operates with a search window of 2000 bytes, and does not use a multiline regex match. To perform a start of line bound match, use a pattern like ``(?m)^pattern``By default, if a question is encountered multiple times, its string response will be repeated. If you need different responses for successive question matches, instead of a string response, use a list of strings as the response. The list functionality is new in 2.1.
The ansible.builtin.expect module is designed for simple scenarios. For more complex needs, consider the use of expect code with the ansible.builtin.shell or ansible.builtin.script modules. (An example is part of the ansible.builtin.shell module documentation).
If the command returns non UTF-8 data, it must be encoded to avoid issues. One option is to pipe the output through
base64
.
See Also
See also
- ansible.builtin.script
Runs a local script on a remote node after transferring it.
- ansible.builtin.shell
Execute shell commands on targets.
Examples
- name: Case insensitive password string match
ansible.builtin.expect:
command: passwd username
responses:
(?i)password: "MySekretPa$$word"
# you don't want to show passwords in your logs
no_log: true
- name: Generic question with multiple different responses
ansible.builtin.expect:
command: /path/to/custom/command
responses:
Question:
- response1
- response2
- response3