Ansible failed to transfer file to /command

Without touching /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

If only one host is affected, then this can be remedied on a per host basis in the hosts file as follows:

alias ansible_host=192.168.1.102 ansible_ssh_transfer_method=scp

This solution requires ansible version 2.3 or higher.

[Source]

do you have sftp subsystem enabled in sshd on the remote server? You can check it in /etc/sshd/sshd_config, the config file name depends on your distribution…anyway, look there for:

Subsystem      sftp    /usr/lib/ssh/sftp-server

If this line is commented-out, the sftp is disabled. To fix it, you can either enable sftp, or change Ansible configuration. I prefer the Ansible configuration change, take a look at ansible.cfg and add/change:

[ssh_connection]
scp_if_ssh=True

In CentOS8 I had to replace this line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Subsystem sftp /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server

with

Subsystem sftp internal-sftp

Then restart sshd service with this command:

systemctl restart sshd

I recently received a message like this for an entirely different reason. I had some stray text that was the result of a cd - command that I had in my ~/.bashrc file. I fixed this issue by filtering its output like this:

my ~/.bashrc

...
cd ~/ansible/hacking/ > /dev/null 2>&1 && . env-setup -q && cd - > /dev/null 2>&1
...

Without those redirects of the cd commands to /dev/null I was getting this message.

TASK [setup] *******************************************************************
ok: [app02]
ok: [app03]
fatal: [app01]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "failed to transfer file to /home/admin/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1474747432.93-129438354708729/setup:\n\n/home/admin\n"}

my ansible.cfg

The other interesting details from my situation are that I'm already using this in my ansible.cfg file:

[ssh_connection]
scp_if_ssh=True

And the server in the list with the issue, app01, is the same server where I'm running the Ansible playbook from.

The bit of text at the end of my error message:

74747432.93-129438354708729/setup:\n\n/home/admin\n"}

is what clued me into my issue. That's the output from cd ... when it runs during login when my ~/.bashrc file is being processed.