I recently needed to download a file from a target Linux server where direct SCP was prohibited. The server is entirely managed using Ansible playbooks in Azure DevOps. The following post explains how I managed to overcome this problem using artifacts in a pipeline run.

Fetch File

The first step needed here is to instruct write a playbook that will fetch the file from the target server and store it in the pool server directory:

---
- name: test_file_transfer
  hosts: all
  roles:
    - detect-become-method

  tasks:

    - name: Copy file to pool server
      become: true
      fetch:
        src: /tmp/test.txt
        dest: pool/agent/directory
        flat: yes

...

Using Artifacts

Next you need to create a task in your pipeline that publishes a pipeline artifact:

- task: PublishPipelineArtifact@1
  inputs:
    targetpath: /pool/agent/directory/test.txt
    artifactName: test artifact
  displayName: 'Publish Artifact'

And that’s it! You’ll find the artifact in your pipeline run under Related > 1 Published. Click on 1 Published and you’ll see the file there!

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