Ansible copy Module: Copy Files & Content to Remote Hosts (Complete Guide) — Video Tutorial

How to copy files to remote hosts? I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot Ansible copy files to remote hosts Today we're talking about Ansible module copy. The full name is "ansible.builtin.copy" which means is part of the collection of modules "builtin" with ansible and shipped with it. This module is pretty stable and out for years. The purpose is to copy files to remote locations. Please note that the opposite is done by [Ansible fetch module](/articles/copy-files-from-remote-hosts-ansible-module-fetch). For Windows target use [Ansible win_copy module](/articles/copy-files-to-windows-remote-hosts-ansible-module-wincopy). Parameters - dest _path_ - remote path - src _string_ - local path - backup _boolean_ - no / yes - validate _string_ - validation command - checksum _string_ 2.5+ - mode/owner/group - setype/seuser/selevel The parameter list is pretty wide but I'll summarize the most useful. The only required parameter is "dest" which specifies the remote absolute path destination. The "src" specifies the source file in the controller host. It could be a relative or absolute path. I recommend absolutely. The backup boolean option allows you to create a backup if the utility overwrites any file. If there is any tool to validate the file we could specify it in the validate parameter, very useful for configuration files. Let me also highlight that we could also specify the permissions and SELinux properties. Demo Let's jump in a real-life playbook to copy files to remote hosts with Ansible. code - copy.yml ```yaml --- - name: copy module Playbook hosts: all become: false tasks: - name: copy report.txt ansible.builtin.copy: src: report.txt dest: /home/devops/report.txt owner: devops mode: '0644' ``` - report.txt ```txt test report.txt ``` [code with ❤️ in GitHub](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/tree/master/copy%20files%20to%20remote%20hosts) Conclusion Now you know how to Copy files to remote hosts with Ansible. Advanced Copy Examples Copy with backup ```yaml - name: Deploy config with automatic backup ansible.builtin.copy: src: files/nginx.conf dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf owner: root group: root mode: '0644' backup: true # Saves existing file as .backup become: true notify: reload nginx ``` Copy entire directory ```yaml - name: Copy directory to remote ansible.builtin.copy: src: files/app/ # Trailing slash copies CONTENTS dest: /opt/myapp/ owner: appuser group: appuser mode: '0755' become: true Without trailing slash: copies the directory itself src: files/app → creates /opt/myapp/app/ src: files/app/ → copies contents into /opt/myapp/ ``` Validate before replacing ```yaml - name: Copy and validate nginx config ansible.builtin.copy: src: files/nginx.conf dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf validate: /usr/sbi