community.general.filesystem module – Makes a filesystem

Note

This module is part of the community.general collection (version 6.6.2).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general. You need further requirements to be able to use this module, see Requirements for details.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.filesystem.

Synopsis

  • This module creates a filesystem.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

  • Uses specific tools related to the fstype for creating or resizing a filesystem (from packages e2fsprogs, xfsprogs, dosfstools, and so on).

  • Uses generic tools mostly related to the Operating System (Linux or FreeBSD) or available on both, as blkid.

  • On FreeBSD, either util-linux or e2fsprogs package is required.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

dev

aliases: device

path / required

Target path to block device (Linux) or character device (FreeBSD) or regular file (both).

When setting Linux-specific filesystem types on FreeBSD, this module only works when applying to regular files, aka disk images.

Currently lvm (Linux-only) and ufs (FreeBSD-only) don’t support a regular file as their target dev.

Support for character devices on FreeBSD has been added in community.general 3.4.0.

force

boolean

If true, allows to create new filesystem on devices that already has filesystem.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

fstype

aliases: type

string

Filesystem type to be created. This option is required with state=present (or if state is omitted).

ufs support has been added in community.general 3.4.0.

Choices:

  • "btrfs"

  • "ext2"

  • "ext3"

  • "ext4"

  • "ext4dev"

  • "f2fs"

  • "lvm"

  • "ocfs2"

  • "reiserfs"

  • "xfs"

  • "vfat"

  • "swap"

  • "ufs"

opts

string

List of options to be passed to mkfs command.

resizefs

boolean

If true, if the block device and filesystem size differ, grow the filesystem into the space.

Supported for btrfs, ext2, ext3, ext4, ext4dev, f2fs, lvm, xfs, ufs and vfat filesystems. Attempts to resize other filesystem types will fail.

XFS Will only grow if mounted. Currently, the module is based on commands from util-linux package to perform operations, so resizing of XFS is not supported on FreeBSD systems.

vFAT will likely fail if fatresize < 1.04.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

state

string

added in community.general 1.3.0

If state=present, the filesystem is created if it doesn’t already exist, that is the default behaviour if state is omitted.

If state=absent, filesystem signatures on dev are wiped if it contains a filesystem (as known by blkid).

When state=absent, all other options but dev are ignored, and the module doesn’t fail if the device dev doesn’t actually exist.

Choices:

  • "present" ← (default)

  • "absent"

Attributes

Attribute

Support

Description

check_mode

Support: full

Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target.

diff_mode

Support: none

Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode.

Notes

Note

  • Potential filesystems on dev are checked using blkid. In case blkid is unable to detect a filesystem (and in case fstyp on FreeBSD is also unable to detect a filesystem), this filesystem is overwritten even if force is false.

  • On FreeBSD systems, both e2fsprogs and util-linux packages provide a blkid command that is compatible with this module. However, these packages conflict with each other, and only the util-linux package provides the command required to not fail when state=absent.

See Also

See also

community.general.filesize

The official documentation on the community.general.filesize module.

ansible.posix.mount

The official documentation on the ansible.posix.mount module.

Examples

- name: Create a ext2 filesystem on /dev/sdb1
  community.general.filesystem:
    fstype: ext2
    dev: /dev/sdb1

- name: Create a ext4 filesystem on /dev/sdb1 and check disk blocks
  community.general.filesystem:
    fstype: ext4
    dev: /dev/sdb1
    opts: -cc

- name: Blank filesystem signature on /dev/sdb1
  community.general.filesystem:
    dev: /dev/sdb1
    state: absent

- name: Create a filesystem on top of a regular file
  community.general.filesystem:
    dev: /path/to/disk.img
    fstype: vfat

Authors

  • Alexander Bulimov (@abulimov)

  • quidame (@quidame)