Ansible troubleshooting - Syntax Error
Let's troubleshoot together the Ansible fatal error "Syntax Error while loading YAML" to find the offending lines in our playbook code, the root cause, fix a missing quote, and verify the resolution is working.


Today we’re going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting and specifically about Syntax Errors. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.
The Best Resources For Ansible
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- Ansible by Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps
- Ansible For Windows By Examples: 50+ Automation Examples For Windows System Administrator And DevOps
- Ansible For Linux by Examples: 100+ Automation Examples For Linux System Administrator and DevOps
- Ansible Linux Filesystem By Examples: 40+ Automation Examples on Linux File and Directory Operation for Modern IT Infrastructure
- Ansible For Containers and Kubernetes By Examples: 20+ Automation Examples To Automate Containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift
- Ansible For Security by Examples: 100+ Automation Examples to Automate Security and Verify Compliance for IT Modern Infrastructure
- Ansible Tips and Tricks: 10+ Ansible Examples to Save Time and Automate More Tasks
- Ansible Linux Users & Groups By Examples: 20+ Automation Examples on Linux Users and Groups Operation for Modern IT Infrastructure
- Ansible For PostgreSQL by Examples: 10+ Examples To Automate Your PostgreSQL database
- Ansible For Amazon Web Services AWS By Examples: 10+ Examples To Automate Your AWS Modern Infrastructure
demo
The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump in a live demo to show you practically the syntax error and how to solve it!
error code
- report.txt
test report.txt
- syntax_error.yml
---
- name: win_copy module demo
hosts: all
become: false
gather_facts: false
vars:
source: "report.txt"
destination: "Desktop/report.txt"
tasks:
- name: copy report.txt
ansible.windows.win_copy:
src: "{{ source }}"
dest: "{{ destination }}
error execution
output:
$ ansible-playbook -i win/inventory troubleshooting/syntax_error.yml
ERROR! We were unable to read either as JSON nor YAML, these are the errors we got from each:
JSON: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)
Syntax Error while loading YAML.
found unexpected end of stream
The error appears to be in 'ansible-pilot/troubleshooting/syntax_error.yml': line 14, column 1, but may
be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.
The offending line appears to be:
src: "{{ source }}"
dest: "{{ destination }}
^ here
We could be wrong, but this one looks like it might be an issue with
missing quotes. Always quote template expression brackets when they
start a value. For instance:
with_items:
- {{ foo }}
Should be written as:
with_items:
- "{{ foo }}"
fix code
- syntax_fix.yml
---
- name: win_copy module demo
hosts: all
become: false
gather_facts: false
vars:
source: "report.txt"
destination: "Desktop/report.txt"
tasks:
- name: copy report.txt
ansible.windows.win_copy:
src: "{{ source }}"
dest: "{{ destination }}"
fix execution
output:
$ ansible-playbook -i win/inventory troubleshooting/syntax_fix.yml
PLAY [win_copy module demo] ***********************************************************************
TASK [copy report.txt] ****************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
WindowsServer : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
Recap
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