One of the biggest challenges when using Ansible, especially at the beginning, is troubleshooting. You often run into errors that are unclear, poorly described, or misleading.

Let’s look at some strategies to help resolve otherwise incomprehensible errors.

dos2unix: In rare cases, issues arise from how different operating systems handle text files. When working in Linux environments, ensure that your files are in the correct format.

yamllint and yamlfmt: Ansible playbooks are written in YAML. Before troubleshooting further, make sure your files are correctly formatted as valid YAML.

ansible-lint: Ansible playbooks follow a specific structure, which can be validated with the built-in linter included in the Ansible package.

Verbosity: You can make the execution of playbooks more verbose by adding one or more -v flags. Usually, -vvv is enough to reveal hidden errors.

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