Not possible to source .bashrc with Ansible

Question

I can ssh to the remote host and do a source /home/username/.bashrc - everything works fine. However if I do:

- name: source bashrc
  sudo: no
  action: command source /home/username/.bashrc

I get:

failed: [hostname] => {"cmd": ["source", "/home/username/.bashrc"], "failed": true, "rc": 2}
msg: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong...

Answer 1

You have two options to use source with ansible. One is with the "shell:" command and /bin/sh (the ansible default). "source" is called "." in /bin/sh. So your command would be:

- name: source bashrc
  sudo: no   
  shell: . /home/username/.bashrc && [the actual command you want run]

Note you have to run a command after sourcing .bashrc b/c each ssh session is distinct - every ansible command runs in a separate ssh transaction.

Your second option is to force Ansible shell to use bash and then you can use the "source" command:

- name: source bashrc
  sudo: no   
  shell: source /home/username/.bashrc && [the actual command you want run]
  args:
     executable: /bin/bash

Finally, I'll note that you may want to actually source "/etc/profile" if you're on Ubuntu or similar, which more completely simulates a local login.