Ansible ad hoc commands only work as sudo unless i'm in the hosts directory - ansible

Question

I'm trying to work through getting started with ansible. When I try to run ad hoc commands with ansible, such as ansible all -m ping I have to either be in the same folder as my hosts file ~/Development/ansible/ or use sudo. I'm getting ready to move forward with learning playbooks but I feel like this is going to come back as a problem at some point.
If I try to run the command outside of that folder without sudo I get this message
<XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX> ESTABLISH CONNECTION FOR USER: Joe
<XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX> REMOTE_MODULE ping
server | FAILED => Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 586, in _executor
exec_rc = self._executor_internal(host, new_stdin)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 789, in _executor_internal
return self._executor_internal_inner(host, self.module_name, self.module_args, inject, port, complex_args=complex_args)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 1036, in _executor_internal_inner
result = handler.run(conn, tmp, module_name, module_args, inject, complex_args)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/action_plugins/normal.py", line 62, in run
return self.runner._execute_module(conn, tmp, module_name, module_args, inject=inject, complex_args=complex_args)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 470, in _execute_module
) = self._configure_module(conn, module_name, args, inject, complex_args)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/runner/__init__.py", line 1351, in _configure_module
module_path = utils.plugins.module_finder.find_plugin(module_name, module_suffixes)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/utils/plugins.py", line 176, in find_plugin
full_paths = (os.path.join(path, f) for f in os.listdir(path))
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Users/Joe/library/Saved Application State/jp.co.trendy.sdformatter.savedState'
I've done a lot of searching around but haven't had much luck finding a solution.
Here is my ~/.ansible.cfg file
# config file for ansible -- http://ansible.com/
# ==============================================
# nearly all parameters can be overridden in ansible-playbook
# or with command line flags. ansible will read ANSIBLE_CONFIG,
# ansible.cfg in the current working directory, .ansible.cfg in
# the home directory or /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg, whichever it
# finds first
[defaults]
# some basic default values...
inventory = ~/Development/ansible/hosts
And, here is my hosts file
server ansible_ssh_host=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX ansible_ssh_user=Joe ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa

Answer 1

This appears to be not an Ansible problem but a permission issue with a software called SD Card Formatter from Trendy Corp. I don't know why this would be triggered when you run Ansible though.
The permissions of all the files in your library should get fixed by "repair permissions" in the Disk Utility Tool. Alternatively make sure the files and folders in /Users/Joe/library/Saved Application State/jp.co.trendy.sdformatter.savedState belong to user Joe: chown -R Joe:Joe /Users/Joe/library/Saved Application State/jp.co.trendy.sdformatter.savedState. If you don't care about this application, deleting the mentioned folder completely should do it too.