community.general.decompress module – Decompresses compressed files

Note

This module is part of the community.general collection (version 10.1.0).

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.decompress.

New in community.general 10.1.0

Synopsis

  • Decompresses compressed files.

  • The source (compressed) file and destination (decompressed) files are on the remote host.

  • Source file can be deleted after decompression.

Requirements

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

  • Requires lzma (standard library of Python 3) or backports.lzma (Python 2) if using xz format.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

attributes

aliases: attr

string

The attributes the resulting filesystem object should have.

To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system.

This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr.

The = operator is assumed as default, otherwise + or - operators need to be included in the string.

dest

path

The file name of the destination file where the compressed file will be decompressed.

If the destination file exists, it will be truncated and overwritten.

If not specified, the destination filename will be derived from src by removing the compression format extension. For example, if src is /path/to/file.txt.gz and format is gz, dest will be /path/to/file.txt. If the src file does not have an extension for the current format, the dest filename will be made by appending _decompressed to the src filename. For instance, if src is /path/to/file.myextension, the (dest) filename will be /path/to/file.myextension_decompressed.

format

string

The type of compression to use to decompress.

Choices:

  • "gz" ← (default)

  • "bz2"

  • "xz"

group

string

Name of the group that should own the filesystem object, as would be fed to chown.

When left unspecified, it uses the current group of the current user unless you are root, in which case it can preserve the previous ownership.

mode

any

The permissions the resulting filesystem object should have.

For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers. You must give Ansible enough information to parse them correctly. For consistent results, quote octal numbers (for example, '644' or '1777') so Ansible receives a string and can do its own conversion from string into number. Adding a leading zero (for example, 0755) works sometimes, but can fail in loops and some other circumstances.

Giving Ansible a number without following either of these rules will end up with a decimal number which will have unexpected results.

As of Ansible 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).

If mode is not specified and the destination filesystem object does not exist, the default umask on the system will be used when setting the mode for the newly created filesystem object.

If mode is not specified and the destination filesystem object does exist, the mode of the existing filesystem object will be used.

Specifying mode is the best way to ensure filesystem objects are created with the correct permissions. See CVE-2020-1736 for further details.

owner

string

Name of the user that should own the filesystem object, as would be fed to chown.

When left unspecified, it uses the current user unless you are root, in which case it can preserve the previous ownership.

Specifying a numeric username will be assumed to be a user ID and not a username. Avoid numeric usernames to avoid this confusion.

remove

boolean

Remove original compressed file after decompression.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

selevel

string

The level part of the SELinux filesystem object context.

This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range.

When set to _default, it will use the level portion of the policy if available.

serole

string

The role part of the SELinux filesystem object context.

When set to _default, it will use the role portion of the policy if available.

setype

string

The type part of the SELinux filesystem object context.

When set to _default, it will use the type portion of the policy if available.

seuser

string

The user part of the SELinux filesystem object context.

By default it uses the system policy, where applicable.

When set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.

src

path / required

Remote absolute path for the file to decompress.

unsafe_writes

boolean

Influence when to use atomic operation to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target filesystem object.

By default this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target filesystem objects, but sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example is docker mounted filesystem objects, which cannot be updated atomically from inside the container and can only be written in an unsafe manner.

This option allows Ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating filesystem objects when atomic operations fail (however, it doesn’t force Ansible to perform unsafe writes).

IMPORTANT! Unsafe writes are subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

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.

Examples

- name: Decompress file /path/to/file.txt.gz into /path/to/file.txt (gz compression is used by default)
  community.general.decompress:
    src: /path/to/file.txt.gz
    dest: /path/to/file.txt

- name: Decompress file /path/to/file.txt.gz into /path/to/file.txt
  community.general.decompress:
    src: /path/to/file.txt.gz

- name: Decompress file compressed with bzip2
  community.general.decompress:
    src: /path/to/file.txt.bz2
    dest: /path/to/file.bz2
    format: bz2

- name: Decompress file and delete the compressed file afterwards
  community.general.decompress:
    src: /path/to/file.txt.gz
    dest: /path/to/file.txt
    remove: true

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key

Description

dest

string

Path to decompressed file

Returned: success

Sample: "/path/to/file.txt"

Authors

  • Stanislav Shamilov (@shamilovstas)