Ansible Permission Denied (Errno 13): Fix File Access Errors — Video Tutorial

Introduction Welcome to another episode of Ansible Pilot! I'm Luca Berton, and today we're delving into Ansible troubleshooting, focusing on the pesky "Permission Denied Errno 13" error. Join me as we explore the intricacies of this issue, reproduce it in a live Playbook, and learn how to effectively resolve it using privilege escalation in Ansible Playbooks. The Demo Let's jump right into a live Playbook to understand how to troubleshoot the Ansible fatal error [Errno 13] Permission denied and fix it in an Ansible Playbook. Error Code ```yaml permissiondenied_error.yml --- - name: set environment Playbook hosts: all gather_facts: false vars: os_environment: - key: EDITOR value: vi tasks: - name: customize /etc/environment ansible.builtin.lineinline: dest: "/etc/environment" state: present regexp: "^{{ item.key }}=" line: "{{ item.key }}={{ item.value }}" with_items: "{{ os_environment }}" ``` Error Execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/permissiondenied_error.yml PLAY [set environment Playbook] *********************************************************************** TASK [customize /etc/environment] ***************************************************************** An exception occurred during task execution. To see the full traceback, use -vvv. The error was: PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: b'/home/devops/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1645543127.772594-89712-144540003805636/tmpvhoh4q83' -> b'/etc/environment' failed: [demo.example.com] (item={'key': 'EDITOR', 'value': 'vi'}) => {"ansible_facts": {"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/libexec/platform-python"}, "ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": false, "item": {"key": "EDITOR", "value": "vi"}, "msg": "The destination directory (/etc) is not writable by the current user. Error was: [Errno 13] Permission denied: b'/etc/.ansible_tmp_hwdwg3denvironment'"} PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=0 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` Fix Code ```yaml permissiondenied_fix.yml --- - name: set environment Playbook hosts: all gather_facts: false become: true vars: os_environment: - key: EDITOR value: vi tasks: - name: customize /etc/environment ansible.builtin.lineinline: dest: "/etc/environment" state: present regexp: "^{{ item.key }}=" line: "{{ item.key }}={{ item.value }}" with_items: "{{ os_environment }}" ``` Fix Execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/permissiondenied_fix.yml PLAY [set environment Playbook] *********************************************************************** TASK [customize /etc/environment] ***************************************