fetch – Fetch files from remote nodes

Synopsis

• This module works like copy, but in reverse.

• It is used for fetching files from remote machines and storing them locally in a file tree, organized by hostname.

• This module is also supported for Windows targets.

Parameters

Parameter	Choices/Defaults	Comments
dest - / required		A directory to save the file into. For example, if the dest directory is /backup a src file named /etc/profile on host host.example.com, would be saved into /backup/host.example.com/etc/profile. The host name is based on the inventory name.
fail_on_missing boolean	Choices: no yes ←	When set to yes, the task will fail if the remote file cannot be read for any reason. Prior to Ansible 2.5, setting this would only fail if the source file was missing. The default was changed to yes in Ansible 2.5.
flat boolean	Choices: no ← yes	Allows you to override the default behavior of appending hostname/path/to/file to the destination. If dest ends with '/', it will use the basename of the source file, similar to the copy module. Obviously this is only handy if the filenames are unique.
src - / required		The file on the remote system to fetch. This must be a file, not a directory. Recursive fetching may be supported in a later release.
validate_checksum boolean	Choices: no yes ←	Verify that the source and destination checksums match after the files are fetched.

Notes

Note

• When running fetch with become, the slurp module will also be used to fetch the contents of the file for determining the remote checksum. This effectively doubles the transfer size, and depending on the file size can consume all available memory on the remote or local hosts causing a MemoryError. Due to this it is advisable to run this module without become whenever possible.

• Prior to Ansible 2.5 this module would not fail if reading the remote file was impossible unless fail_on_missing was set.

• In Ansible 2.5 or later, playbook authors are encouraged to use fail_when or ignore_errors to get this ability. They may also explicitly set fail_on_missing to no to get the non-failing behaviour.

• This module is also supported for Windows targets.

See Also

See also

copy – Copy files to remote locations

The official documentation on the copy module.

slurp – Slurps a file from remote nodes

The official documentation on the slurp module.

Examples

- name: Store file into /tmp/fetched/host.example.com/tmp/somefile
  fetch:
    src: /tmp/somefile
    dest: /tmp/fetched

- name: Specifying a path directly
  fetch:
    src: /tmp/somefile
    dest: /tmp/prefix-{{ inventory_hostname }}
    flat: yes

- name: Specifying a destination path
  fetch:
    src: /tmp/uniquefile
    dest: /tmp/special/
    flat: yes

- name: Storing in a path relative to the playbook
  fetch:
    src: /tmp/uniquefile
    dest: special/prefix-{{ inventory_hostname }}
    flat: yes

Status

• This module is guaranteed to have no backward incompatible interface changes going forward. [stableinterface]

• This module is maintained by the Ansible Core Team. [core]

Red Hat Support

More information about Red Hat’s support of this module is available from this Red Hat Knowledge Base article.

Authors

• Ansible Core Team

• Michael DeHaan

Hint

If you notice any issues in this documentation you can edit this document to improve it.