Using Ansible Mount Filesystem

The ansible mount module lets you control and configure mount points on remote hosts. It provides basic functionalities such as mounting and unmounting of filesystems and devices.

Install Ansible Mount (POSIX) module

The ansible mount module is part of Ansible.posix.collections and hence may not be available in all Ansible installations by default.

To use it, we need to install it from the Ansbile Galaxy. Open the terminal and enter the command:

sudo ansible-galaxy collection install Ansible.posix

The command above will install the Posix collections.

We will use example playbooks to understand better how to use the mount module in Ansible.

Example 1 – Mount a device

To mount a device using the Ansible playbook, we call the mount module and provide the required parameters. The most important ones are path and src.

The path parameter defines the path to the mount point, while the src parameter defines the device or volume to be mounted to the specified path.

The example playbook below shows you how to mount a device using its label.

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Mount a device by label
      mount:
        path: /mounts/backups
        src: LABEL=Backup
        fstype: ext4
        state: mounted

The playbook above will mount the device with the label Backup to /mounts/backups on the remote host.

We also define the filesystem in the fstype parameter. Finally, we describe the state of the mount point.

The mount module supports the following states:

1. Mounted – When the state is set to mounted, the device will be mounted and configured in the fstab. Ansible will automatically create the mount point if it does not exist.
2. Unmounted – if set to unmounted, the specified device will be mounted with no changes to the fstab.
3. Present – If set to present, the device is configured in fstab, with no need for a mount point.
4. Absent – if absent, Ansible will remove the device's mount entry from fstab and remove its mount point.
5. Remounted – used when you want to remount a device. Typically used to refresh the mount point.

Example 2 – Mount on NTFS filesystem.

To mount a device in the NTFS filesystem, change the fstype as shown in the example playbook below.

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Mount a device by label
      mount:
        path: /mounts/backups
        src: LABEL=Backup
        fstype: ntfs
        state: mounted

Example 3 – Mount and Bind Volume

To mount and bind a volume using the mount module, use an example playbook as shown:

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Mount and bind volume
      mount:
        path: /mnt/dev10
        src: /dev/mountMe
        fstype: none
        opts: bind
        state: mounted

In the example above, we use the mount option, bind to bind the volume. Check fstab mount options to see the available options.

Example 4 – Mount a device by UUID

Instead of a label, you can use the UUID to mount a specific device. Consider the example playbook below:

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Mount device via UUID
      mount:
        path: /mnt/dev10
        src: UUID=39717898-48ea-11ec-81d3-0242ac130003
        fstype: ext4
        opts: defaults
        state: mounted

Example 5 – Unmounting a Volume

To unmount a mounted volume using the Ansible mount module, set the state to unmounted as shown in the playbook below:

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Unmount a volume
      mount:
        path: /mnt/dev10
        state: unmounted

The unmount option does not edit the fstab. For that, you can use the state: absent as shown in the playbook below:

Example 6 – Unmounting Volume and edit fstab

---
- name: Ansible Mount Module
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: false
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Unmount a volume
      mount:
        path: /mnt/dev10
        state: absent

The example above will unmount and edit the fstab to remove the mount point.

Closing

In this guide, we discussed how to work with the Ansible mount module and looked at various usecases of the module.

Thank you for reading.