Ansible Pilot

Ansible troubleshooting - Destination does not exist

How to reproduce the destination does not exist error in Ansible, troubleshooting, and fix to be able to successfully download a file from an URL in a home directory with your Ansible playbook.

January 4, 2022
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Today we’re going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting, specifically about the destination does not exist error. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

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The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump in a live demo to show you practically the destination does not exist error and how to solve it!

error code

---
- name: get_url module demo
  hosts: all
  become: false
  vars:
    myurl: "https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz"
    mycrc: "sha256:https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz.sha"
    mydest: "ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz"
  tasks:
    - name: download file
      ansible.builtin.get_url:
        url: "{{ myurl }}"
        dest: "{{ mydest }}"
        checksum: "{{ mycrc }}"
        mode: '0644'

error execution

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/destinationdoesnotexist_error.yml

PLAY [get_url module demo] ******************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]

TASK [download file] ************************************************************************
fatal: [demo.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "checksum_dest": null, "checksum_src": "574e24659f555fe370571167d3d44704671f1773", "dest": "ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz", "elapsed": 3, "msg": "Destination  does not exist", "src": "/home/devops/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1640555219.326019-1431-267536126421544/tmpmx_ra0hd", "url": "https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz"}

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=1    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0   

fix code

---
- name: get_url module demo
  hosts: all
  become: false
  vars:
    myurl: "https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz"
    mycrc: "sha256:https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz.sha"
    mydest: "ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz"
  tasks:
    - name: download file
      ansible.builtin.get_url:
        url: "{{ myurl }}"
        dest: "./{{ mydest }}"
        checksum: "{{ mycrc }}"
        mode: '0644'

fix execution

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/destinationdoesnotexist_fix.yml 

PLAY [get_url module demo] ******************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]

TASK [download file] ************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com]

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0   

verification

$ ssh [email protected]
[[email protected] ~]$ ls -al
total 13964
drwx------. 4 devops wheel      140 Dec 26 21:47 .
drwxr-xr-x. 5 root   root        50 Dec 15 13:00 ..
drwx------. 3 devops wheel       17 Dec 15 13:00 .ansible
-rw-------. 1 devops wheel      322 Dec 26 21:46 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--. 1 devops wheel       18 Jul 26 09:51 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--. 1 devops wheel      141 Jul 26 09:51 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--. 1 devops wheel      376 Jul 26 09:51 .bashrc
drwx------. 2 devops wheel       29 Dec 15 13:00 .ssh
-rw-r--r--. 1 devops wheel 14280306 Dec 26 21:47 ansible-2.9.25.tar.gz

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

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