Why is this basic ansible playbook throwing an error? - yaml

Question

I am trying to understand how ansible playbooks are structured and I am failing at a basic example:
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
# update dependencies
- name: install apt dependencies
apt: name={{ item }}
with_items:
- python3-arrow
- python3-netifaces
- python3-requests
- python3-docopt
- name: install pip3 dependencies
pip: name=scapy-python3 executable=pip3
# install service
- name: copy source file
copy: src=honeysyn.py dst=/opt/sentinel-honeysyn/honeysyn.py
- name: copy service file
copy: src=honeysyn.service dst=/etc/systemd/system/honeysyn.service mode=0644
- name: install service, restart and enable
systemd:
name: honeysyn
daemon_reload: yes
enabled: yes
started: yes
The error is:
The offending line appears to be:
copy: src=honeysyn.service dst=/etc/systemd/system/honeysyn.service mode=0644
- name: install service, restart and enable
^ here
I checked the consistency of the YAML file and the JSON output makes sense:
[
{
"tasks": [
{
"name": "install apt dependencies",
"apt": "name={{ item }}",
"with_items": [
"python3-arrow",
"python3-netifaces",
"python3-requests",
"python3-docopt"
]
},
{
"pip": "name=scapy-python3 executable=pip3",
"name": "install pip3 dependencies"
},
{
"copy": "src=honeysyn.py dst=/opt/sentinel-honeysyn/honeysyn.py",
"name": "copy source file"
},
{
"copy": "src=honeysyn.service dst=/etc/systemd/system/honeysyn.service mode=0644",
"name": "copy service file"
},
{
"systemd": {
"started": true,
"enabled": true,
"name": "honeysyn",
"daemon_reload": true
},
"name": "install service, restart and enable"
}
],
"hosts": "all"
}
]
I found out that the errors are often very much off the real bug (I had the same case as above, but it was an extra space after a = in a completely different place) - thus the whole playbook.
What is wrong with this playbook?

Answer 1

The systemd module that you are attempting to use is present in Ansible 2.2 (which is not released as far as I know) and hence will not work with any of the currently available Ansible versions.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/systemd_module.html

Answer 2

As #Amit pointed out, it's not released yet.
Ansible seems to have a very zealous documentation release schedule, which sometimes outstrips the release of the actual supporting code :-)
Maybe try the service module instead for now, something like this should work:
- name: install service, enable and start
service:
name: honeysyn
enabled: yes
state: started