Trying to use template file on remote-exec provisioner

[Sreekumar]

Hi all,

I am trying to use template file on remote-exec provisioner. But the problem is, it only execute the first command of the script. Can anyone help me on this?

resource "template_file" "user_data" {

    template = "${file("${path.module}/userdata.sh.tpl")}"

    vars {

        foo       = "${var.bar}"

    }

}

resource "aws_instance" "test"{

    ami           = "${var.ami}"

    instance_type = "${var.instance_type}"

    key_name      = "${var.key_name}"

    subnet_id     = "${var.subnet_id}"

    provisioner "remote-exec" {

        inline = ["${template_file.user_data.rendered}"]

        connection {

            user = "${var.user}"

            type = "ssh"

            private_key = "${file(var.private_key)}"

            timeout = "2m"

        }

    }

    vpc_security_group_ids = ["${aws_security_group.test.id}"]

    tags      { Name = "${var.name}" }

}

[David Maze]

On Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 3:48:34 AM UTC-4, Sreekumar wrote:

I am trying to use template file on remote-exec provisioner. But the problem is, it only execute the first command of the script.

    provisioner "remote-exec" {
        inline = ["${template_file.user_data.rendered}"]
    }

That seems consistent with the documentation for the remote-exec provisioner: if you want it to execute multiple commands, you need to put them in list form.

At the bottom of https://www.terraform.io/docs/provisioners/remote-exec.html there's an example that uploads a static script and invokes it with command-line arguments, which could presumably be Terraform variables.  That might be an easier way to accomplish your actual goals. 

[Michael Daffin]

Try using a heredoc with the rendered template:

provisioner "remote-exec" {
    inline = <<EOF
${template_file.user_data.rendered}
EOF
}

[Sreekumar]

heardoc method is seems to be not working, it throws 'invalid characters in heredoc anchor'. And for the file method, how can we create a file from template file.

[Michael Daffin]

That suggest you have a problem with either the 

    inline = <<EOF

or

EOF

line rather than the template part. Can you post the exact code you tried to use? Note that spacing and indentation is important for heredocs to work.

[Robert J]

Awesome!  This saved me quite a bit of time.  I was used to `bash` here docs and put a space between `<<` and my ending string, since bash is not picky and I think it looks nicer.  Apparently, you cannot do this in terraform.

Thanks for this post!