ansible shell calling maven exec fails

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1

All,

I would assume ansible would run a bash script exactly as if it were run from the CLI, but apparently not. Can any one help me understand the differences?

I am using ansible shell to start a set of five long running processes. Each process is a bash script that starts a java program. Each script is set up with an & so the process runs in the background. To wit:

`

shell: ./start.sh &
`

All process work as expected when started manually by logging in to the hosts one by one and running the exact same command that would be run using shell. Three of the processes do indeed work when started from ansible shell, but two fail to start at all. These two have something in common: Both use maven exec:exec to start them. The others do not.

Is there any reason for this?

Thanks mucho for any insights.

2

With shell module you would not get the users environment, so you probably missing correct PATH and/or other environment variables need for starting.

3

Thanks Kai

Is there anyway to get the user’s env?

4

It depends somewhat on you setup.

You could use environment in Ansible
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_environment.html

If the environment is in a file, you could source it if you use the shell module.
The shell module uses /bin/sh in Ansible so this might not be straightforward.

You could make a startup script that contained all you would need to start the program.

The best option is probably to create init file and start them as a service.