Ansible modules for syncing data with iRODS

This collection contains Ansible modules facilitating data transfer between an Ansible target machine and an iRODS server.

Using the main ibridges_sync module you can easily sync data between the iRODS server and the Ansible target machine. The main advantages of this module (compared to other ways of automating iRODS transfers with Ansible) are:

• ease of use. The ibridges_sync module handles login, file comparison, and upload/download in one go.
  • The alternative is to manually install the icommands suite and call various commands from that suite in a number of separate ansible.builtin.command tasks.
• security. The password you pass to the ibridges_sync module is never stored on disk, as it directly calls the iBridges Python API.
  • When using the icommands, credentials typically are stored on disk. This may be undesirable, e.g. in multiuser cloud environments.

This module is based on the excellent iBridges Python library.

Installation

Requirements:

• ansible-galaxy
• the ibridges pip package must be installed on the Ansible target (see below).

ansible-galaxy collection install git+https://github.com/UtrechtUniversity/ibridges-ansible.git

Usage

First make sure that the ibridges Python library is available on the Ansible target machine. For example, add the following to a playbook:

- name: Install packages
  pip:
    name: "ibridges"

A note on global pip installs

The above snippet installs ibridges as a global pip package. Although this will likely work just fine, it is not considered best practice as updating the global pip dependencies may cause system packages that depend on them to fail. If this is a concern, you can instead install ibridges to a custom location:

- name: Install packages
  pip:
    name: "ibridges"
   extra_args: "--target /my/custom/location"

If you do this, subsequent invocations of the modules provided by this collection need to point to the location where iBridges was installed by adding the right PYTHONPATH to the module's environment:

- name: iBridges sync down
  ibridges_sync:
    mode: down
    ... # etc.
  environment:
    PYTHONPATH: /my/custom/location

Module ibridges_sync

The main module provided by this collection is ibridges_sync, which allows you to sync a local directory with a directory on the iRODS server.

Note: sync will only work if the folder already exists on iRODS. If you want to upload a new directory, use the ibrdiges_upload module.

    - name: iBridges sync up
      ibridges_sync:
        mode: up # sync from the Ansible target to the iRODS server
        env:
          irods_host: irods.foo.bar
          irods_port: 1247
          irods_user_name: rods
          irods_default_resource: "demoResc"
          irods_home: /tempZone/home/rods
          irods_zone_name: tempZone
        irods_path: "~/testfiles"
        local_path: "/tmp/test/testfiles"
        password: rodspass
      check_mode: false # check_mode: true will perform a dry run, listing paths that would be changed

    - name: iBridges sync down
      ibridges_sync:
        mode: down # sync from the iRODS server to the Ansible target
        env_file: /path/to/environment.json # instead of defining env, you can also pass the location of an environment file.
        irods_path: "~/testfiles"
        local_path: "/home/rods/testfiles"
        password: rodspass
      check_mode: false # check_mode: true will perform a dry run, listing paths that would be changed

Module ibridges_upload

There is also an ibridges_upload module for uploading separate files or folders:

    - name: Upload testfiles
      ibridges_upload:
        env:
          irods_host: irods.foo.bar
          irods_port: 1247
          irods_user_name: rods
          irods_default_resource: "demoResc"
          irods_home: /tempZone/home/rods
          irods_zone_name: tempZone
        irods_path: "~/testfiles" # will create the ~/testfiles directory on iRODS if it doesn not exist yet
        local_path: "/tmp/test/testfiles"
        password: rodspass