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pipe

Collection Note

This module is part of the ansible.builtin collection. To install the collection, use:

ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.builtin
Added in version 0.9.

Synopsis

  • Run a command and return the output.

Parameters

Parameter Defaults / Choices Comments
_terms
required
command(s) to run.

Notes

Note

  • Like all lookups this runs on the Ansible controller and is unaffected by other keywords, such as become, so if you need to different permissions you must change the command or run Ansible as another user.
  • Alternatively you can use a shell/command task that runs against localhost and registers the result.
  • Pipe lookup internally invokes Popen with shell=True (this is required and intentional). This type of invocation is considered a security issue if appropriate care is not taken to sanitize any user provided or variable input. It is strongly recommended to pass user input or variable input via quote filter before using with pipe lookup. See example section for this. Read more about this L(Bandit B602 docs,https://bandit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins/b602_subprocess_popen_with_shell_equals_true.html)
  • The directory of the play is used as the current working directory.

Examples

- name: raw result of running date command
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.pipe', 'date') }}"

- name: Always use quote filter to make sure your variables are safe to use with shell
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.pipe', 'getent passwd ' + myuser | quote ) }}"

Return Values

Key Data Type Description Returned
_string list stdout from command

Authors