Line breaks are excluded when copying a file from ansible linux host to windows server using win_copy

[ishan jain]

I am copying some text files located on a linux file system to windows file system using the win_copy module of Ansible. The final copied file do not have line breaks in it.

So the file which is like this on linux:

line1

line2

line3

Becomes this on windows:

line1line2line3

How can i make sure win_copy just copy the file exactly as it is ?

[J Hawkesworth]

My guess is you are hitting the difference between what linux and windows considers a line ending.

linux is happy with \n 

windows wants \r\n

if you run 

od -cx yourfile

you will probably only see \n

if the file was originally created on a windows machine, in say, Notepad, then it will get the \r\n line endings.

I suggest you do the following:

edit the file in Notepad on a windows machine.

use the fetch module to copy it from the windows machine to your ansible controller

use od -cx to check it has windows line endings

the file from windows should now copy across unmodified when using win_copy

Hope this helps,

Jon

[Nick Mellor]

Hi Ishan,

As mentioned previously, the file has not changed, just that Windows and Linux expect different line endings.

 

This is what worked for me using Powershell, converting Linux line-endings to Windows line-endings:

 

- name: convert line endings from Linux to Windows (PowerShell)

  win_shell: '(Get-Content "filename_from") -replace "`n", "`r`n" | Set-Content "filename_to.txt"'

 

The reason I needed to do this was that I was checking out text files on Linux, then copying them to a Windows server.

But the problem is, Git automatically ensures files have the "right" line-endings during checkout (meaning "right" for the machine doing the checkout, not the machine the file's copied to.)

Cheers,

 

Nick