Ansible Pilot

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.

September 15, 2021
Access the Complete Video Course and Learn Quick Ansible by 200+ Practical Lessons

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

Video Course

Printed Book

eBooks

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

test report.txt
---
- 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

---
- 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

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

Now you know better how to troubleshoot the Ansible Syntax Error. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, Website, Twitter, and Substack to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.

Academy

Learn the Ansible automation technology with some real-life examples in my

My book Ansible By Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps

BUY the Complete PDF BOOK to easily Copy and Paste the 250+ Ansible code

Want to keep this project going? Please donate

Access the Complete Video Course and Learn Quick Ansible by 200+ Practical Lessons
Follow me

Subscribe not to miss any new releases