pyratelog

commit 8dcff8aec1e1ea83fa5762ad597eb828d9adef02
parent ca97fd173aa58a83024518175051a4811440f3ad
Author: pyratebeard <root@pyratebeard.net>
Date:   Thu,  3 Mar 2022 16:51:30 +0000

unbuffer

Diffstat:
A
entry/unbuffer.md
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diff --git a/entry/unbuffer.md b/entry/unbuffer.md
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+I use Ansible quite a lot these days, and I find the coloured output useful when I am skimming through the results.
+
+The other day I had to capture the output as a file to show a colleague, so I used `tee`
+```
+ansible-playbook playbook.yml | tee results.out
+```
+
+By piping to `tee` Ansible doesn't show any colour.  This is common if a command doesn't think it is writing to an interactive output.
+
+A quick internet search provided a [useful solution](https://superuser.com/a/751809){target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"}, to use the `unbuffer` command.  You can get this command by installing the `expect` package on Arch or rpm-based distros or `expect-dev` on deb-based distros.
+
+Now prepend `unbuffer` to your command
+```
+unbuffer ansible-playbook playbook.yml | tee results.out
+```
+
+This will also add the colour codes to your output file so if you use `less` add the `-R` option
+```
+less -R results.out
+```
+
+This will work with any command, not just `ansible-playbook`.
+
+A downside to `unbuffer` is that it doesn't recognise aliases.  I alias `ansible-playbook` to `ap` but cannot use that with `unbuffer`.  I have seen an alternative way of preserving colour using the `script` command but it was not as easy to get working.
+
+It is not often that I need this so I will stick with `unbuffer` for now.  If you know of any other methods I would be happy to hear them, contact details can be found on my [homepage](https://pyratebeard.net).