Introduction Today we're going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting, specifically about the "This command has to be run under the root user" message. This fatal error message happens when we are trying to execute a module that requires more privilege during module execution. These circumstances are usually related to Ansible Playbook or Ansible configuration. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Playbook The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump in a live Playbook to show you practically the "This command has to be run under the root user" and how to solve it! This Playbook is going to try to install the "rsync" package on our target system. error code ```yaml --- - name: Troubleshooting under the root user hosts: all become: false tasks: - name: rsync installed ansible.builtin.package: name: rsync state: present ``` error execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/under_root_user_error.yml PLAY [Troubleshooting under the root user] ******************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [rsync installed] **************************************************************************** fatal: [demo.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "This command has to be run under the root user.", "results": []} PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` fix code ```yaml --- - name: Troubleshooting under the root user hosts: all become: true tasks: - name: rsync installed ansible.builtin.package: name: rsync state: present ``` fix execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory troubleshooting/under_root_user_fix.yml PLAY [Troubleshooting under the root user] ******************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [rsync installed] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` [code with ❤️ in GitHub](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/tree/master/troubleshooting) Conclusion Now you know better how to troubleshoot the Ansible "This command has to be run under the root user." message. Fix: Enable become Task level ```yaml - name: Install package ansible.builtin.apt: name: nginx state