Need advice executing awk commands resulting from output of Ansible ad-hoc command

Question

When I execute the following command to find index IDs by using an Ansible ad-hoc command:

$ ansible oamvip -i /storage/inventory/None/${myvnf}hosts --become -m shell -a "/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep "PartitionUsage" | awk '{ print \$2 }'"
xxx.xx.xxx.xxx | CHANGED | rc=0 >>
4818b4715eb6542838023
e520bec15eb6542838023 

However, when I try to execute a shell command (sh) on the results from the awk output, Ansible shows me the help menu:

$ ansible oamvip -i /storage/inventory/None/${myvnf}hosts --become -m shell -a "/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep "PartitionUsage" | awk '{ print "aladmin show " \$2 | "sh"}'"
Usage: ansible <host-pattern> [options] 

I've tried single and double quotes, backslashes, to no avail. Please advise.

Answer 1

"/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep "PartitionUsage" | awk '{ print \$2 }'"

is just one string (word) from the perspective of the shell which parses the whole command line. I assume it is passed to sh -c. Independent of your problem, it should be

"/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep \"PartitionUsage\" | awk '{ print \$2 }'"

or

"/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep PartitionUsage | awk '{ print \$2 }'"

instead.

set -x
: "/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep "PartitionUsage" | awk '{ print "aladmin show " \$2 | "sh"}'"
+ : '/usr/sbin/aladmin list | grep PartitionUsage | awk '\''{ print aladmin' show ' $2 | sh}'\'''

Those are three words for the shell and thus for ansible which does not understand these arguments.

It's again the ".

awk '{ print "aladmin show " \$2 | "sh"}'

must become

awk '{ print \"aladmin show \" \$2 | \"sh\"}'

BTW

There is (nearly in general and especially in this case) no reason for a

... | grep ... | awk ...

pipeline as (with few exceptions like PCRE) awk can do everything that grep can.

grep PartitionUsage | awk '{ print \$2 }'

=>

awk '/PartitionUsage/ { print \$2 }'