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lineinfile - Ensure a particular line is in a file, or replace an existing line using a back-referenced regular expression.

Synopsis
Options
Examples
Notes
- Status
- Maintenance Info

Synopsis

This module will search a file for a line, and ensure that it is present or absent.
This is primarily useful when you want to change a single line in a file only. See the replace module if you want to change multiple, similar lines or check blockinfile if you want to insert/update/remove a block of lines in a file. For other cases, see the copy or template modules.

Options

parameter	required	default	choices	comments
attributes (added in 2.3)	no	None		Attributes the file or directory should have. To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system. This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr. aliases: attr
backrefs	no	no	yes no	Used with `state=present`. If set, line can contain backreferences (both positional and named) that will get populated if the `regexp` matches. This flag changes the operation of the module slightly; `insertbefore` and `insertafter` will be ignored, and if the `regexp` doesn't match anywhere in the file, the file will be left unchanged. If the `regexp` does match, the last matching line will be replaced by the expanded line parameter.
backup	no	no	yes no	Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
create	no	no	yes no	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the file will be created if it does not already exist. By default it will fail if the file is missing.
group	no			Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
insertafter	no	EOF	EOF regex	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the line will be inserted after the last match of specified regular expression. A special value is available; `EOF` for inserting the line at the end of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, EOF will be used instead. May not be used with `backrefs`.
insertbefore	no		BOF regex	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the line will be inserted before the last match of specified regular expression. A value is available; `BOF` for inserting the line at the beginning of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, the line will be inserted at the end of the file. May not be used with `backrefs`.
line	no			Required for `state=present`. The line to insert/replace into the file. If `backrefs` is set, may contain backreferences that will get expanded with the `regexp` capture groups if the regexp matches.
mode	no			Mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers (like 0644). Leaving off the leading zero will likely have unexpected results. As of version 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, `u+rwx` or `u=rw,g=r,o=r`).
others	no			All arguments accepted by the file module also work here.
owner	no			Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
path	yes			The file to modify. Before 2.3 this option was only usable as dest, destfile and name. aliases: dest, destfile, name
regexp (added in 1.7)	no			The regular expression to look for in every line of the file. For `state=present`, the pattern to replace if found; only the last line found will be replaced. For `state=absent`, the pattern of the line(s) to remove. Uses Python regular expressions; see http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html.
selevel	no	s0		Level part of the SELinux file context. This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the `range`. `_default` feature works as for seuser.
serole	no			Role part of SELinux file context, `_default` feature works as for seuser.
setype	no			Type part of SELinux file context, `_default` feature works as for seuser.
seuser	no			User part of SELinux file context. Will default to system policy, if applicable. If set to `_default`, it will use the `user` portion of the policy if available.
state	no	present	present absent	Whether the line should be there or not.
unsafe_writes (added in 2.2)	no		yes no	Normally this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example are docker mounted files, they cannot be updated atomically and can only be done in an unsafe manner. This boolean option allows ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files for those cases in which you do not have any other choice. Be aware that this is subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.
validate	no	None		The validation command to run before copying into place. The path to the file to validate is passed in via '%s' which must be present as in the example below. The command is passed securely so shell features like expansion and pipes won't work.

Examples

# Before 2.3, option 'dest', 'destfile' or 'name' was used instead of 'path'
- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/selinux/config
    regexp: '^SELINUX='
    line: 'SELINUX=enforcing'

- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/sudoers
    state: absent
    regexp: '^%wheel'

- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/hosts
    regexp: '^127\.0\.0\.1'
    line: '127.0.0.1 localhost'
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: 0644

- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
    regexp: '^Listen '
    insertafter: '^#Listen '
    line: 'Listen 8080'

- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/services
    regexp: '^# port for http'
    insertbefore: '^www.*80/tcp'
    line: '# port for http by default'

# Add a line to a file if it does not exist, without passing regexp
- lineinfile:
    path: /tmp/testfile
    line: '192.168.1.99 foo.lab.net foo'

# Fully quoted because of the ': ' on the line. See the Gotchas in the YAML docs.
- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/sudoers
    state: present
    regexp: '^%wheel\s'
    line: '%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL'

# Yaml requires escaping backslashes in double quotes but not in single quotes
- lineinfile:
    path: /opt/jboss-as/bin/standalone.conf
    regexp: '^(.*)Xms(\\d+)m(.*)$'
    line: '\1Xms${xms}m\3'
    backrefs: yes

# Validate the sudoers file before saving
- lineinfile:
    path: /etc/sudoers
    state: present
    regexp: '^%ADMIN ALL='
    line: '%ADMIN ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL'
    validate: '/usr/sbin/visudo -cf %s'

Notes

Note

As of Ansible 2.3, the dest option has been changed to path as default, but dest still works as well.

Status

This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.

Maintenance Info

For more information about Red Hat’s this support of this module, please refer to this knowledge base article<https://access.redhat.com/articles/rhel-top-support-policies>

For help in developing on modules, should you be so inclined, please read Community Information & Contributing, Testing Ansible and Developing Modules.

© 2012–2017 Michael DeHaan
© 2017 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/lineinfile_module.html