Using lookup plugin

I wanted to create a playbook to create a mksysb image and use the date command to append it into the file.
The option that I had is to use one of the lookup plugins to access data from the host where I am running the playbook.
In this case, I used pipe to read the output from a command and used a variable to store the value and use it in my tasks. If I need to run my playbook several times, my mksysb will not be overwritten.



---
- name: Create backup
  hosts: qualys
  vars:
    date: "{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y%m%d') }}"
  tasks:

   - name: Mount NFS filesystem
     aix_filesystem:
       filesystem: /mnt
       nfs_server: unxshr
       device: /Store/ansible/mksysb
       state: mounted

   - name: Run mksysb on "{{ ansible_hostname }}"
     mksysb:
       name: "{{ ansible_hostname }}.{{ date }}.mksysb"
       storage_path: /mnt
       exclude_files: yes
       exclude_wpar_files: yes

   - name: Compress mksysb file
     archive:
       path: "/mnt/{{ ansible_hostname }}.{{ date }}.mksysb"
       remove: yes

   - name: Umount NFS filesystem
     aix_filesystem:
       filesystem: /mnt
       nfs_server: unxshr
       device: /Store/ansible/mksysb
       state: unmounted


References:

Lookup Plugins

Modify your SNMP configuration with regexp

I used the following play to modify the SNMP configuration but you can use it to modify any other files.

I used the replace module instead of lineinfile since you can find several matches for any of these lines that you want to replace.
The tricky thing about this task is the use of Regular expressions in Python.
The module works in the following way, what it is matched with the regexp expression will be replaced by the replace line.
What was challenging for me was to learn the backreferences. This is used to match a regular expression and use it later in your replace line.
I will use the last line to explain how it works.
You have to add the regular expression you want to match inside the parentheses. You can name it using ?P , otherwise it will be named as expression number 1.
In my example is ?P<comm>

In my case I wanted to replace
community tivoli 192.132.10.0 255.255.255.0      writeOnly
with
community tivoli 192.132.10.0 255.255.255.0      readOnly

I used the following regexp line in my play

community
\s for whitespace
\w* for word characters plus the * to match 0 or more repetitions to match tivoli
\s for whitespace
\b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b\ to match 192.132.10.0
s\ for whitespace
b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b) to match 255.255.255.0
(?P<rw>readWrite) to match readWrite

In the line, I used the group I had created g<comm> (if I hadn't name it I would have used g<1> ) and the pattern I wanted to add which was readOnly.
My new line will be g<comm> which is community tivoli 192.132.10.0 255.255.255.0 plus readOnly

   - name: SNMP Configuration
     replace:
      path: /etc/snmpd.conf
      regexp: "{{ item.regexp }}"
      replace: "{{ item.line }}"
     loop:
       - { regexp: '^community(.+)public', line: '#community      public' }
       - { regexp: '^community(.+)private', line: '#community      private' }
       - { regexp: '^community(.+)system', line: '#community      system' }
       - { regexp: '(?P<comm>^community\s\w*\s\b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b\s\b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b)\s(?P<rw>readWrite)', line: '\g<comm>      readOnly' }

References:

Regular expressions

Python regex

Replace module