Ansible-pull systemd unit fails

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1

I now have the very weird problem ansible-pull works perfectly fine as user ansible, but when doing the same from a systemd service fails without any useful logs apart from this:

systemd[1]: ansible-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
systemd[1]: ansible-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

The unit file looks like this:

[Unit]
Description=Manage server configuration with ansible-pull
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ansible-pull -U https://example.com/ansible.git --clean --diff initiate.yml
User=ansible

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Anyone have a clue what might be wrong, or how I could get more detailed logs or error messages?

2

Wouldn’t you need to specify where to pull it too?

  $ ansible-pull --help | grep DEST
                [--purge] [-o] [-s SLEEP] [-f] [-d DEST] [-U URL] [--full]
  -d, --directory DEST  path to the directory to which Ansible will checkout
3

If not specified, it will pull into ~/.ansible/pull/HOSTNAME, but even when the command is simply ansible-pull --version it fails similarly.

4

There are more details in the system journal. For example, running journalctl -b -u ansible-pull --no-hostname -o short --no-pager after having attempted to start your service from your initial post on my system produces:

$ sudo journalctl -b -u ansible-pull --no-hostname -o short --no-pager
Jan 06 07:10:50 systemd[1]: Starting ansible-pull.service - Manage server configuration with ansible-pull...
Jan 06 07:10:51 python3[37407]: ansible-git Invoked with name=https://example.com/ansible.git dest=/home/ansible/.ansible/pull/foxtrot depth=1 force=True repo=https://example.com/ansible.git version=HEAD remote=origin clone=True update=True verify_commit=False gpg_whitelist=[] accept_hostkey=False accept_newhostkey=False bare=False recursive=True single_branch=False track_submodules=False refspec=None reference=None key_file=None ssh_opts=None executable=None umask=None archive=None archive_prefix=None separate_git_dir=None
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]: [WARNING]: Could not match supplied host pattern, ignoring: foxtrot
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]: localhost | FAILED! => {
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "changed": false,
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "cmd": "/usr/bin/git ls-remote https://example.com/ansible.git -h refs/heads/HEAD",
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "msg": "fatal: repository 'https://example.com/ansible.git/' not found",
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "rc": 128,
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "stderr": "fatal: repository 'https://example.com/ansible.git/' not found\n",
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "stderr_lines": [
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:         "fatal: repository 'https://example.com/ansible.git/' not found"
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     ],
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "stdout": "",
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]:     "stdout_lines": []
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]: }
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]: Starting Ansible Pull at 2025-01-06 07:10:51
Jan 06 07:10:53 ansible-pull[37389]: /usr/bin/ansible-pull -U https://example.com/ansible.git --clean --diff initiate.yml
Jan 06 07:10:53 systemd[1]: ansible-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Jan 06 07:10:53 systemd[1]: ansible-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 06 07:10:53 systemd[1]: Failed to start ansible-pull.service - Manage server configuration with ansible-pull.
Jan 06 07:10:53 systemd[1]: ansible-pull.service: Consumed 873ms CPU time, 139.3M memory peak.

Obviously mine failed because I didn’t point at a valid https repo, but the point is there’s more information in the system journal than is reported by systemctl status ansible-pull.service.

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