Ansible find module fails to print files found matching pattern - search

Question

My target server home directory has files like below:
$ cd ~
$ ls -la
total 84
drwxr--r-- 7 wluser wluser 4096 Jun 11 02:56 .
drwxr-xr-x. 32 root root 4096 Jun 10 03:20 ..
drwx------ 4 wluser wluser 25 May 26 12:17 .ansible
-rw------- 1 wluser wluser 34681 Jun 11 03:29 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 wluser wluser 18 Aug 21 2019 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 wluser wluser 193 Aug 21 2019 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 wluser wluser 231 Aug 21 2019 .bashrc
drwxrwxr-x 4 wluser wluser 27 Feb 17 04:48 .cache
drwxrwxr-x 4 wluser wluser 28 Feb 17 08:17 .config
-rw-r--r-- 1 wluser wluser 172 Feb 17 2020 .kshrc
-rw------- 1 wluser wluser 40 May 28 11:59 .lesshst
drwxr----- 3 wluser wluser 18 Feb 17 08:17 .pki
-rw------- 1 wluser wluser 1204 Jul 5 10:05 .sh_history
drwxr--r-- 2 wluser wluser 76 May 28 10:59 .ssh
-rw------- 1 wluser wluser 13314 Jun 11 02:56 .viminfo
I use the below ansible play to find all file matching pattern:
121 - find:
122 paths: "/home/wluser/"
123 recurse: no
124 file_type: any
125 patterns:
126 - "*.sh*"
127 - "*.bash*"
128 - "*.ksh*"
129 - "*.profile*"
130 - ".ssh"
131 register: to_copy
132
133
134 - debug:
135 msg: "FOUNDDDXX {{ to_copy}}"
The output shows that it did not match anything when i expected this to work and display all the file in the home directory.
TASK [find] ***************************************************************************************************
task path: /web/playbooks/ansibleuser/va_action.yml:121
ok: [remotehost1] => {
"changed": false,
"examined": 72,
"files": [],
"invocation": {
"module_args": {
"age": null,
"age_stamp": "mtime",
"contains": null,
"file_type": "any",
"follow": false,
"get_checksum": false,
"hidden": false,
"paths": [
"/home/wluser/"
],
"patterns": [
"*.sh*",
"*.bash*",
"*.ksh*",
"*.profile*",
".ssh"
],
"recurse": false,
"size": null,
"use_regex": false
}
},
"matched": 0,
"msg": ""
}
TASK [debug] **************************************************************************************************
task path: /web/playbooks/ansibleuser/va_action.yml:134
ok: [remotehost1] => {
"msg": "FOUNDDDXX {u'files': [], u'changed': False, 'failed': False, u'examined': 72, u'msg': u'', u'matched': 0}"
}
The pattern matching may be incorrect but the .ssh folder should have matched for sure however, that too is not found.
$ ansible --version
ansible 2.4.2.0
config file = /home/ansbladm/.ansible.cfg
python version = 2.7.5
Can you please suggest how can i display all files under the home directory matching the patterns ?

Answer 1

This works for me
tasks:
- name: find files
find:
paths: /home/myuserId
patterns:
- "(.*bash.*)$"
- "(.*ssh.*)$"
use_regex: yes
hidden: yes
register: list_of_files
- name: print files
debug:
msg: "{{ list_of_files.files }}"
Note that use_regex: true and hidden: true. Without that argument, It did not work for me as well. I see you missed that argument in your code. Try that and let me know what you see