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Commenting a line using the Ansible lineinfile module

It’s hard for me to believe that in this case there is nothing to use, but my search turned out to be fruitless.

I have a line in /etc/fstab to install a disk that is no longer available:

 //archive/Pipeline /pipeline/Archives cifs ro,credentials=/home/username/.config/cifs 0 0

I want to change it to

 #//archive/Pipeline /pipeline/Archives cifs ro,credentials=/home/username/.config/cifs 0 0

I used this

 --- - hosts: slurm remote_user: root tasks: - name: Comment out pipeline archive in fstab lineinfile: dest: /etc/fstab regexp: '^//archive/pipeline' line: '#//archive/pipeline' state: present tags: update-fstab

expecting it to just insert a comment character (#), but instead it replaced the whole line, and I ended up with

 #//archive/Pipeline

is there a way glob-capture the rest of the line or just insert a single char comment?

  regexp: '^//archive/pipeline *' line: '#//archive/pipeline *'

or

  regexp: '^//archive/pipeline *' line: '#//archive/pipeline $1'

I am trying to wrap my head around lineinfile and from what I read, it seems that insertafter is what I am looking for, but "insert after" is not what I want?

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3 answers

You can use replace module for your case:

 --- - hosts: slurm remote_user: root tasks: - name: Comment out pipeline archive in fstab replace: dest: /etc/fstab regexp: '^//archive/pipeline' replace: '#//archive/pipeline' tags: update-fstab

It will replace all occurrences of the string that matches regexp .

lineinfile , on the other hand, only works on one line (even if several matches are found in the file). It ensures that a particular line is missing or present with specific content.

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Use backrefs = yes :

Used with state = present. If set, the string can contain backlinks (both positional and named) that will be populated if the regular expression matches.

Like this:

 - name: Comment out pipeline archive in fstab lineinfile: dest: /etc/fstab regexp: '(?i)^(//archive/pipeline.*)' line: '# \1' backrefs: yes state: present

Also note that I use the (?i) parameter for regexp because your search expression will never match Pipeline with capital P in the fstab example.

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This is one of the many reasons lineinfile is antipattern. In many cases, the template is the best solution. In this case, the mount module was developed for this.

 - name: Remove the pipeline archive mount: name="/archive/pipeline" state=absent

But "ah!" you say that you "want to save what the mountain was in fstab at a time." You made one better using mount , you kept it inaccessible .

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