How to validate the sudoers file before changing the file in Ansible

Question

Hi Guys,

I have added one entry in the sudoers file. But before saving the file I want to check if the syntax is correct or not. Otherwise, my ansible-playbook will configure the wrong task. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Hi@akhtar,

You can do this using lineinfile module in Ansible. After changing the data, this module has the capability to validate the file as shown below.

- name: Validate the sudoers file before saving
  lineinfile:
    path: /etc/sudoers
    state: present
    regexp: '^%ADMIN ALL='
    line: '%ADMIN ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL'
    validate: /usr/sbin/visudo -cf %s