# Multiple users running ansible on the same host causes blocking

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/multiple-users-running-ansible-on-the-same-host-causes-blocking/23832>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** ubuntu\
**Created:** [February 27, 2017, 7:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/multiple-users-running-ansible-on-the-same-host-causes-blocking/23832 "2017-02-27T19:56:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Andrew\_Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/77aa72/32.png) [@Andrew\_Martin](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Andrew_Martin)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2017, 7:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/multiple-users-running-ansible-on-the-same-host-causes-blocking/23832/1 "2017-02-27T19:56:38Z")

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I am running Ansible 2.2.0 on Ubuntu 16.04. When I have more than one user running a playbook on hosts all from this same server, I sometimes observe this behavior:

- user 1 starts running a playbook on host A, playbook is running along fine
- user 2 starts running a playbook on host B, playbook runs along fine
- user 1’s playbook gets stuck on a task, if you strace it it is waiting on a select() call
- user 2’s playbook finishes running, immediately user 1’s playbook stops blocking and finishes running

I don’t see resource contention on this machine (RAM or CPU) and each ansible instance is running as different users on the system. Any ideas what could be causing this “one ansible-playbook run blocks the other” behavior and how to fix it?

Thanks,

Andrew

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**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/multiple-users-running-ansible-on-the-same-host-causes-blocking/23832/2 "2017-02-27T21:55:03Z")

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ansible itself does not share resources across invocations, but there  
are a few things that could be configures to cause this.

Are you using a common user? do you have custom callbacks or facts  
cache setup to a absolute path? are your contol persist settings  
relative or absolute?

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**Author:** ![Andrew\_Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/77aa72/32.png) [@Andrew\_Martin](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Andrew_Martin)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2017, 2:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/multiple-users-running-ansible-on-the-same-host-causes-blocking/23832/3 "2017-02-28T14:11:42Z")

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Brian,

Thanks, these are good ideas:

> Are you using a common user?

no, separate users

> do you have custom callbacks or facts cache setup to a absolute path?

yes, but the custom callback path is relative

> are your contol persist settings relative or absolute?

absolute; I have changed this to be a relative path inside each user’s home directory

I’ll re-test and let you know if this fixes it.

Thanks,

Andrew