Windows File Difference

[Mark Matthews]

Hi

I am trying to find an way Ansible can not only alert me of a change in a file but exactly what was changed in that file.

I am currently using win_stat play bookk to check the host file of a server and let me know if anything has changed. This works great, cut it only tells me if something has changed, it doesn;t tell me what has changed in the file.

---

- name: Check Host file

  hosts: all

  tasks:

     - name: stat the hosts file

       win_stat:

         path: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

       register: hosts_fileinfo

     - name: show hosts file stats for debugging purposes

       debug:

         var: hosts_fileinfo

     - name: Fail if Host File Missing

       fail:

         msg: "WEB.CONFIG file is missing"

       when: hosts_fileinfo.stat.exists != true

     - name: Fail if Host File Modified

       fail:

         msg: "HOSTS file has been modified"

       when: hosts_fileinfo.stat.checksum != "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

I am looking for something that the following Powershell script does.
As you can see it has picked up that there is a difference between the two files and it then shows me where the difference is.

PS H:\> Compare-Object -ReferenceObject (Get-Content C:\Temp\applicationHost.config) -DifferenceObject (Get-Content  C:\Temp\applicationHost_2.config)

InputObject                                                                                          SideIndicator                                                                                       

-----------                                                                                          -------------                                                                                       

            <section name="applicationPool" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="De... =>                                                                                                  

            <section name="applicationPools" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="D... <=              

Any help with this would be really appreciated.

Cheers

Mark

                                                                                                                                                                                 

[J Hawkesworth]

At the moment I don't think there's anything in the windows modules that will help with this.  If anyone knows better please say but I think today --check and --diff aren't implemented for windows modules.

However, it might be possible to make use of the --check and --diff playbook command line arguments if you first fetch the files that you care about back to the controller and then use copy tasks (which won't actually copy in --check mode).

There's a thread here describing this

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/6xkSE1nxIOU

That said, as you've pointed out comparing files in powershell is pretty straightforward so there's no reason why win_copy couldn't be changed to implement --check and --diff modes.

Hope this helps,

Jon

[Mark Matthews]

Hi Jon

I tried creating the following playbook below, and running the following command:  ansible-playbook test_win.yml --check --diff 
But I just got errors Not sure if this is what you were trying to explain what I should do?

---

- name: Check host file diff

  hosts: all

  tasks:

    - name: Check host file diff

      win_copy:

        src: /srv/hosts

        dest: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

I am able to run the below powershell script through a playbook, and it works, but it really doesn't help me as the Ansible does not give the output of of any changes that the powershell script may have picked up.
Is there a way to get Ansible to show the powershell output of a script that it runs?

Cheers

Mark

[J Hawkesworth]

Hi

Sorry, probably didn't explain myself very well and what I was proposing was probably pretty fragile.

You'd have to set up a directory of reference files that you want to compare to, and another of candidate files.
Then you'd need a playbook to use fetch to pull the candidate files back from the windows hosts, and then use the copy module (running with --check --diff) to ''copy'' between the candidate and reference files.  It wouldn't actually copy but would show the difference between the reference and candidate files I think.

You can see the output from command if you run ansible with -v switch or if you store results from commands using register, and then use the debug module to display the contents of the registered variable.

Hope this helps,

Jon