Config Template collection

Synopsis

Renders template files providing a create/update override interface

  • The module contains the template functionality with the ability to override items in config, in transit, through the use of a simple dictionary without having to write out various temp files on target machines. The module renders all of the potential jinja a user could provide in both the template file and in the override dictionary which is ideal for deployers who may have lots of different configs using a similar code base.

  • The module is an extension of the copy module and all of attributes that can be set there are available to be set here.

Examples

Example for .conf

The config_template collection has a variety of tools available. A .conf file may include options that are not normally supported in an INI file, but are used in OpenStack, like ListOpt and MultiStrOpt.

Even though we are generating a .conf file, we specify the config_type` of ini` when using config_template.

Playbook:

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - openstack.config_template.config_template:
        content: |
          [foo]
          bar = baz

          [section1]
          option1 = value1
          option2 = value2
        dest: "test_dst.conf"
        config_type: "ini"
        config_overrides:
          hello:
            cruel: world
          section1:
            option1: value2
            option2: {}
          orderedListSection:
            listOpt:
              - listItem1
              - listItem2
          multiStrOpSection:
            multiStrOpOption:
              ? multiStrOp1
              ? multiStrOp2

Resulting file on the remote host:

[foo]
bar = baz

[section1]
option1 = value2

[hello]
cruel = world

[orderedListSection]
listOpt = listItem1,listItem2

[multiStrOpSection]
multiStrOpOption = multiStrOp1
multiStrOpOption = multiStrOp2

Take notice of the option2 in section1, which is removed in the output but requires an empty dictionary in the playbook YAML. The empty dictionary is translated to None value and the default behavior is to remove keys with None values. See parameter ignore_none_type, which defaults to true.

A practical example would be for something like OpenStack’s nova.conf where the input of:

nova_conf_override:
  filter_scheduler:
    enabled_filters:
      - ComputeFilter
      - NUMATopologyFilter
  pci:
    ? passthrough_whitelist: '{"address":"*:0a:00.*",
      "physical_network":"pn1"}'
    ? passthrough_whitelist: '{"vendor_id":"1137","product_id":"0071"}'

Would produce:

[filter_scheduler]
enabled_filters = ComputeFilter,NUMATopologyFilter

[pci]
passthrough_whitelist = '{"address":"*:0a:00.*", "physical_network":"pn1"}'
passthrough_whitelist = '{"vendor_id":"1137","product_id":"0071"}'

Example for .ini with remote_src

The remote_src: true argument instructs config_template to use a file that is already on the remote host as the source content.

Input file on the remote host:

[foo]
# comment
bar = baz

[hello]

Playbook:

- hosts: remote_host
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - config_template:
        remote_src: true
        src: "/etc/test_src.ini"
        dest: "/etc/test_dst.ini"
        config_type: "ini"
        config_overrides:
          hello:
            cruel: world

Resulting file on the remote host:

[foo]
# comment
bar = baz

[hello]
cruel = world

Example of overrides with variable in mapping key

Due to Ansible design dictionary keys are not templated, which means that override like that will not work as might be expected:

- hosts: remote_host
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - config_template:
        remote_src: true
        content: |
          [foo]
          bar = baz
        dest: "/etc/test_dst.ini"
        config_type: "ini"
        config_overrides:
          "{{ inventory_hostname }}":
            cruel: world

Resulting file of such override will be following on the remote host:

[foo]
bar = baz

[{{ inventory_hostname }}]
cruel = world

In order to properly render dictionary keys it’s proposed to workaround the limitation by defining dictionary as Jinja2 template, rather then Ansible mapping.

Working as expected example can be found below:

- hosts: remote_host
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - config_template:
        remote_src: true
        content: |
          [foo]
          bar = baz
        dest: "/etc/test_dst.ini"
        config_type: "ini"
        config_overrides: |-
          {{
            {
              inventory_hostname: {
                'cruel': 'world'
              }
            }
          }}

Resulting file of the override above will be following file on the remote host:

[foo]
bar = baz

[remote_host]
cruel = world

Preventing content from renderring

There are few different way that can be used to prevent some content from being renderred. First one is to use Jinja’s {% raw %} tag.

Template:

[foo]
# comment
bar = {% raw %}{{ baz }}{% endraw %}

Result:

[foo]
# comment
bar = {{ baz }}

Another way around could be customizing Jinja tags used to identify variables and block string. For that variable_start/end_string or block_start/end_string options could be used. These variables could be provided as an arguments to the module or by adding a special header to template file.

Note

Please mention, that changing identification for start/end of blocks works only inside the template and does not affect config_overrides option.

Template:

#jinja2:variable_start_string:'[%', variable_end_string:'%]'

[foo]
# comment
bar = {{ baz }}
foo = [% inventory_hostname %]

Result:

[foo]
# comment
bar = {{ baz }}
foo = localhost

To use the collection, include this in your meta/main.yml:

collections:
  - openstack.config_template

Also the Ansible requirement file can be used with the ansible-galaxy command to automatically fetch the collections for you in a given project. To do this add the following lines to your requirements.yml file.

collections:
  - name: https://opendev.org/openstack/ansible-config_template
    version: master
    type: git

After that simple run the following command to get requirements installed:

$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml