Using group module; "Failed to find required executable groupadd"

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1

Hello,

While attempting to provision a Digital Ocean virtual server my playbook needs to create two groups:

  • sudousers
  • sshusers

Creation of the virtual server is successful however creating the groups fails with the message:

msg: Failed to find required executable groupadd

The OS is Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, freshly provisioned.

Sending the which groupadd command after SSH to the server yeilds:

which groupadd
/usr/sbin/groupadd

Sending the command groupadd results in a help page, so the executable is definitely there.

Ansible versions:

  • ansible 1.7.1
  • ansible-playbook 1.7.1

Any ideas what I may be doing wrong here?

2

Hello All,

I found that the problem was my use of the “-c local” flag in my CLI invocation of the playbook.
Additionally I upgraded from Ansible version 1.7.1 to version 1.7.2

Originally the command that failed was:

ansible-playbook -v -c local -i localhost someplaybook.yml

After changing the command to
ansible-playbook -v -i localhost someplaybook.yml

The playbook ran as expected.

Just wanted to post a solution for everyone, in case of future similar problems.

3

Yes, -c local will force every host in your playbook to run locally. It’s good for a simple playbook targetting localhost, but you shouldn’t do it in general with playbooks targetting your whole infra.

Glad you figured it out!