This exercise will cover Jinja2 templating. Ansible uses Jinja2 templating to modify files before they are distributed to managed hosts. Jinja2 is one of the most used template engines for Python
As an example of using templates you will create a file to contain host-specific data.
First create the directory inside ansible-files templates to hold template resources:
[student<X>DevOps-Workshop1/ansible_files]$ mkdir templates
Then in the ansible-files/templates/ directory create the template file machine-facts.j2:
Welcome to {{ ansible_hostname }}.
{{ ansible_distribution }} {{ ansible_distribution_version}}
deployed on {{ ansible_architecture }} architecture.
The template file contains the basic text that will later be copied over. It also contains variables which will be replaced on the target machines individually.
Next we need a playbook to use this template. In the ansible-files directory create the Playbook machine-facts.yaml:
---
- name: Fill the file with host data
hosts: localhost
become: true
tasks:
- template:
src: machine-facts.j2
dest: machine-facts.txt
owner: root
group: root
mode: 0644