Templates and Files

Managing configuration files is one of the most common tasks in infrastructure automation. Ansible provides the template module (powered by Jinja2) for dynamic files and the copy module for static files.

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Static Files vs Templates

Feature	copy Module	template Module
Source	Static file	Jinja2 template (.j2)
Variables	Not supported	Fully supported
Logic	None	Conditionals, loops, filters
Use case	Files that never change	Configuration files that vary per host or environment

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The copy Module

Copy static files from the control node to managed nodes:

tasks:
  - name: Copy static HTML file
    copy:
      src: files/index.html
      dest: /var/www/html/index.html
      owner: www-data
      group: www-data
      mode: '0644'

  - name: Copy with backup
    copy:
      src: files/app.conf
      dest: /etc/app/app.conf
      backup: true    # Create a backup of the existing file

Important copy Parameters