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Ansible allows to do the following:

- name: create /dev/sdb
  filesystem:
    force: no
    fstype: ext4
    dev: /dev/sdb

Which will create a partition. However, this partition will be placed at /dev/sdb, where the disk block device should be, thus the disk block device is lost. Is there any way to access the disk block device when this happens?

vaartis
  • 103

1 Answers1

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Which will create a partition.

I disagree.

According to the documentation this module creates a filesystem. It's like mkfs (I guess it just runs proper mkfs under the hood). It writes to the device but it doesn't change the special file (e.g. /dev/sdb) itself. After the operation the path /dev/sdb refers to the same block device as before.

Is there any way to access the disk block device when this happens?

Yes, the device is still /dev/sdb.

Note you specified the entire device /dev/sdb. It's more common to create a filesystem on a partition (e.g. /dev/sdb1). Still, creating a filesystem on an entire device is possible (compare this question). In this case the partition table (if any) will be overwritten by structures of the newly created filesystem, at least partially. In Ansible I expect force: no will protect you from such mishap, but frankly I have never tested this scenario.

Kamil Maciorowski
  • 81,893