# Intermittent error "failed to resolve remote temporary directory from" **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Tags:** aws\ **Created:** [December 28, 2015, 9:06am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080 "2015-12-28T09:06:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pradeep\_Reddy1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pradeep\_Reddy1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Pradeep_Reddy1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 9:06am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080/1 "2015-12-28T09:06:49Z")
I keep getting this error once in every 4/5 times. fatal: [xxx]: FAILED! =\> {"failed": true, "msg": "ERROR! failed to resolve remote temporary directory from ansible-tmp-1451292385.49-145367138177040: `( umask 22 && mkdir -p \"$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1451292385.49-145367138177040 )\" && echo \"$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1451292385.49-145367138177040 )\" )` returned empty string"} This is happening for one of the tasks randomly, following are those tasks - name: update journald.conf to ForwardToSyslog >   lineinfile: >     dest: /etc/systemd/journald.conf >     regexp: ForwardToSyslog >     line: ForwardToSyslog=yes >   sudo: yes - name: create config directory >   file: name={{config\_dir}} state=directory >         owner=core group=core mode=0755 I am not sure how to debug this as this doesn't happen always. Target host is CoreOS with pypy setup, on AWS EC2. ansible 2.1.0 (devel d5446f9804) ---
**Author:** ![Brad\_Murray](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a587f6/32.png) [@Brad\_Murray](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brad_Murray)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080/2 "2016-02-05T04:16:57Z")
Happens to me too. Running Ubuntu 14.04 boxes via Vagrant, both Virtualbox and KVM. OSX control machine Ansible is version 2.0.0.2 Is really making development painful. ---
**Author:** ![Andrea\_Sorbini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/74df32/32.png) [@Andrea\_Sorbini](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Andrea_Sorbini)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080/3 "2016-02-09T20:55:09Z")
I’m also experiencing the same annoying issue running Ansible from Ubuntu 15.04 (from source: ansible 2.1.0 (devel ccbc7d217b) last updated 2016/02/07 19:18:50 (GMT -700)) on Virtualbox VMs running boot2docker (python 2.7.10). It happens on random topics. Having a play that simply pings all hosts and fails on any error helps a little bit to mitigate, ie. most of the time, if that passes, the error won’t show up. Black magic (sort of). Any help in identifying/solving the issue is much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Jonas\_Kongslund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee59a6/32.png) [@Jonas\_Kongslund](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jonas_Kongslund)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2016, 7:12am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080/4 "2016-02-10T07:12:12Z")
I also experience the same thing on Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS using Ansible 2.0.0.2-1ppa~trusty. **sysadm@controller:~$** ansible -vvv host1 -m command -a ‘ls -l /’ Using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file \<10.10.10.51\> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None \<10.10.10.51\> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -q -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/home/sysadm/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r -tt 10.10.10.51 ‘( umask 22 && mkdir -p “$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455084832.33-184704261198709 )” && echo “$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455084832.33-184704261198709 )” )’ 10.10.10.51 | FAILED | rc=0 \>\> ERROR! failed to resolve remote temporary directory from ansible-tmp-1455084832.33-184704261198709: `( umask 22 && mkdir -p "$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455084832.33-184704261198709 )" && echo "$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455084832.33-184704261198709 )" )` returned empty string **sysadm@controller:~$** ansible -vvv host1 -m command -a ‘ls -l /’ Using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file \<10.10.10.51\> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None \<10.10.10.51\> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -q -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/home/sysadm/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r -tt 10.10.10.51 ‘( umask 22 && mkdir -p “$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455085172.76-47799942152084 )” && echo “$( echo $HOME/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455085172.76-47799942152084 )” )’ \<10.10.10.51\> PUT /tmp/tmpMAqVn7 TO /home/sysadm/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455085172.76-47799942152084/command \<10.10.10.51\> SSH: EXEC sftp -b - -C -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/home/sysadm/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r ‘[10.10.10.51]’ \<10.10.10.51\> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None \<10.10.10.51\> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -q -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/home/sysadm/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%h-%p-%r -tt 10.10.10.51 ‘LANG=en\_US.UTF-8 LC\_ALL=en\_US.UTF-8 LC\_MESSAGES=en\_US.UTF-8 /usr/bin/python /home/sysadm/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455085172.76-47799942152084/command; rm -rf “/home/sysadm/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1455085172.76-47799942152084/” \> /dev/null 2\>&1’ 10.10.10.51 | SUCCESS | rc=0 \>\> total 84 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 18 04:41 bin drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 18 04:41 boot drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4040 Feb 10 06:06 dev … Any idea why this is happening? ---
**Author:** ![Jonas\_Kongslund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee59a6/32.png) [@Jonas\_Kongslund](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Jonas_Kongslund)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 6:18am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/intermittent-error-failed-to-resolve-remote-temporary-directory-from/20080/5 "2016-02-17T06:18:13Z")
After further investigations I have come to believe that it relates to SSH connection reuse. After disabling any connection reuse I no longer encounter the error: ansible all -i hosts -m ping --ssh-extra-args=“-o ControlMaster=no -o ControlPath=none -o ControlPersist=no” Doing this will of course impact performance so consider it a workaround until the cause of the error has been identified and fixed. You can also add the extra parameters in your inventory file using [ansible\_ssh\_extra\_args](http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_inventory.html#list-of-behavioral-inventory-parameters).