Problem with file paths when using ansible.builtin.copy module

[antonc42]

SUMMARY

Almost all Ansible operations appear to use the unresolved path to the Ansible temp directory '~/.ansible/tmp'. However, the ansible.builtin.copy module appears to resolve this path to '/root/.ansible/tmp' when looking for the source file. The underlying problem is that when I examined the filesystem on the VM, it appears that the community.libvirt.libvirt_qemu connection plugin is copying all files in the temp directory to '/~/.ansible/tmp'. The tilde is not being resolved to the homedir of the user and instead ends up in a '/~' directory at the root of the filesystem.

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

COMPONENT NAME

community.libvirt.libvirt_qemu connection plugin

ANSIBLE VERSION

ansible [core 2.15.4]
  config file = /home/user/ansible-dir/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/user/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /home/user/ansible-dir/.venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /home/user/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /home/user/ansible-dir/.venv/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.11.5 (main, Aug 25 2023, 13:19:50) [GCC 11.4.0] (/home/user/ansible-dir/.venv/bin/python)
  jinja version = 3.1.2
  libyaml = True

COLLECTION VERSION

# /home/user/ansible-dir/.venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/ansible_collections
Collection        Version
----------------- -------
community.libvirt 1.2.0  

CONFIGURATION

CONFIG_FILE() = /home/user/ansible-dir/ansible.cfg
DEFAULT_HOST_LIST(/home/user/ansible-dir/ansible.cfg) = ['/home/user/ansible-dir/inventory.yml']
DEFAULT_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES(env: ANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES) = False
EDITOR(env: EDITOR) = /home/user/bin/vim

OS / ENVIRONMENT

Target OS: Ubuntu 22.04 Server

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

ansible -i local-libvirt-inventory.yml --become all -m copy -a 'src=srcfile dest=/path/to/dest/file'

EXPECTED RESULTS

The local file is copied to the libvirt host.

ACTUAL RESULTS

The file is not copied. When examining the filesystem in the libvirt VM, I found that the directory '/root/.ansible/tmp' doesn't exist. It is located at '/~/.ansible/tmp' instead.

libvirt-host | FAILED! => {
    "changed": false,
    "checksum": "fac0b7e52fc298c5c5feb6b7673f74e2306aba6e",
    "msg": "Source /root/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1695394376.1436307-368511-193439908275987/source not found"
}

[csmart]

@antonc42 hi, thanks for posting this issue. I've been trying to replicate it and didn't have luck with various versions of ansible and python on Fedora and CentOS. I spun up an Ubuntu 22.05 host and was able to replicate the issue.

After some digging, I think this is related to Ubuntu's use of dash as the default for /bin/sh on the guest. Are you able to try with bash and see if you have any different result?

Should be able to just set Use dash as the default system shell to no and retry without your patch.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

Let me know how you go!