Ansible Symbolic Link Task Role Failure - ansible

Question

I am new to ansible and executing the following ansible task:
- name: Create symbolic links
file:
src: "{{ item.src }}"
dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
owner: "{{ jboss_usr }}"
group: "{{ jboss_grp }}"
state: link
with_items:
- { src: "/apps/etc/jboss", dest: "/etc/jboss" }
- { src: "/apps/var/log/jboss", dest: "/var/log/jboss" }
And I got the following error:
2018-12-21 21:27:23,469 p=15185 u=ex_sam | failed: [hostname.x] (item={u'dest': u'/etc/jboss', u'src': u'/apps/etc/jboss'}) => {
"changed": false,
"invocation": {
"module_args": {
"attributes": null,
"backup": null,
"content": null,
"delimiter": null,
"dest": "/etc/jboss",
"diff_peek": null,
"directory_mode": null,
"follow": true,
"force": true,
"group": "jboss",
"mode": null,
"original_basename": null,
"owner": "jboss",
"path": "/etc/jboss",
"recurse": false,
"regexp": null,
"remote_src": null,
"selevel": null,
"serole": null,
"setype": null,
"seuser": null,
"src": "/apps/etc/jboss",
"state": "link",
"unsafe_writes": null,
"validate": null
}
},
"item": {
"dest": "/etc/jboss-as",
"src": "/apps/etc/jboss"
},
"msg": "Error while linking: [Errno 13] Permission denied",
"path": "/etc/jboss-as",
"state": "absent"
}
I am trying to find out why the symbolic link creation failed.
I read the following:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/common_return_values.html#id6
I says the "changed" attribute is a boolean indicating if the task had to make changes.
But, there are lots of null parameters in the invocation:module_args elements of the json
Does that mean the values are really “null” or they are being set to a default value?
I have looked into the ansible documentation and I am not sure if the invocation:module_args null values are representative of the outcome of the trying to create the symbolic link i.e. are the null input or output of executing the tasks.
I think some of the nulls are defaults, but will appreciate some helpful comments on the possible relation between the json returned in my ansible error log and the actual "Error while linking: [Errno 13] Permission denied".
Thanks all for you anticipated help.

Answer 1

I think, is the permissions on /etc. So probably you need to add the option:
become: true
To your task.