Best way to accomplish this task using slurp

[CyberCyber]

From my Ansible control server, I want to connect to server A and slurp the contents of a file into a variable. Then on server B, I want to output the contents of the variable into a file.

I'm using Ansible version 1.9.4 on Ubuntu 14. This is the approach that I've tried, but it does not work:

hosts file:
[server_A]
172.19.99.15

[server_B]
172.19.99.16

playbook:
---
- name: part one of playbook
  hosts: server_A
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:
   - name: slurp a file
     slurp: src=/tmp/test.txt
     register: fileContents

   - debug: msg="{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}"

- name: part two of playbook
  hosts: server_B
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:
   - debug: msg="{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}"

   - name: write out contents of fileContents to a file
     file: "dest=/tmp/test.txt content={{ fileContents | b64decode }}"

execution:
$ ansible-playbook main.yml -i inventory -u testing -k

PLAY [part one of playbook] ***********************************************

TASK: [slurp a file] **********************************************************
ok: [172.19.99.15]

TASK: [debug msg="{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}"] ********************
ok: [172.19.99.15] => {
    "msg": "This is a test file to be slurped by ansible.\n"
}

PLAY [part two of playbook] ***********************************************

TASK: [debug msg="{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}"] ****************************************
fatal: [172.19.99.16] => One or more undefined variables: 'fileContents' is undefined

FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************
           to retry, use: --limit @/tmp/main.retry

172.19.99.15              : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0  
172.19.99.16              : ok=0    changed=0    unreachable=1    failed=0  

[Brian Coca]

several things wrong there, but im just going to give you some thing
that should 'just work'

- name: part one of playbook
hosts: server_A
gather_facts: no

tasks:
- name: slurp a file
slurp: src=/tmp/test.txt
register: fileContents

- debug: msg="{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}"

- template: src=file_contents.j2 dest=/tmp/test.txt
delegate_to: server_B

where file_contents.j2:
{{ fileContents.content | b64decode }}


--
Brian Coca

[CyberCyber]

Hi Brian,

Can you elaborate on the several things that are wrong with the approach taken above? It seems dynamic variables do not carry over from each play. Is this intentional ?

Your suggestion would work, but won't that require server_B to have access to server_A. What if that is not an option? It's possible to use fetch and store the file locally on the control server, but what if I am trying to avoid doing that? Is there another approach using slurp ?

Thanks.

[Brian Coca]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 9:39 PM, CyberCyber <myn3w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you elaborate on the several things that are wrong with the approach
> taken above? It seems dynamic variables do not carry over from each play. Is
> this intentional ?

play vars are not carry over, but host associated vars do, you just
need to access them through the host they are associated with.

> Your suggestion would work, but won't that require server_B to have access
> to server_A. What if that is not an option? It's possible to use fetch and
> store the file locally on the control server, but what if I am trying to
> avoid doing that? Is there another approach using slurp ?

slurp copies the file to the 'controller' (machine you run ansible
from), so the servers do not need any access to each other.

--
Brian Coca