Introduction 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. Demo The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump into a live Playbook to show you practically the syntax error and how to solve it! Error Code **report.txt:** ```yaml test report.txt ``` **syntax_error.yml:** ```yaml --- - name: win_copy module Playbook 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: ```bash $ 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:** ```yaml --- - name: win_copy module Playbook 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: ```bash $ ansible-playbook -i win/inventory troubleshooting/syntax_fix.yml PLAY [win_copy module Playbook] *********************************************************************** 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](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/tree/master/troubleshooting) Conclusion Now you know better how to troubleshoot the Ansible Syntax Error. Common Syntax Errors and Fixes Error 1: "could not find expected ':'" ``` ERROR! Syntax Error while loading YAML. could not find expected ':' ``` **Cause:** Missing colon after a key, or unquoted string containing a colon. ```yaml ❌ WRONG - name: Deploy app hosts: all tasks - name: test debug: msg: "hello" ✅ FIX — add colon after tasks - name: Deploy app hosts: all tasks: -