Getting this error from Ansible when trying to change the permissions on a file

ansiblefile-permissions

I have the following task in a role named tomcat:

- name: copy tomcat file settings
  copy:
    src: "{{ item.src }}"
    dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
    owner: tomcat
    group: tomcat
    mode: "{{ item.mode }}"
  with_items:
  - { src: logrotate-tomcat7, dest: /etc/logrotate.d/tomcat7, mode: 0644 }
  - { src: keystore.pks, dest: /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps, mode: 0644  }
  - { src: jmxremote.access, dest: /etc/tomcat7, mode: 0644   }
  - { src: jmxremote.password, dest: /etc/tomcat7, mode: 0600 }

When I run the playbook that calls the tomcat role, I see the following output:

TASK [devops-server : copy tomcat file settings] *********************************
changed: [10.71.10.11] => (item={u'dest': u'/etc/logrotate.d/tomcat7', u'src': u'logrotate-tomcat7', u'mode': 420})
changed: [10.71.10.11] => (item={u'dest': u'/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps', u'src': u'keystore.pks', u'mode': 420})
changed: [10.71.10.11] => (item={u'dest': u'/etc/tomcat7', u'src': u'jmxremote.access', u'mode': 420})
failed: [10.71.10.11] (item={u'dest': u'/etc/tomcat7', u'src': u'jmxremote.password', u'mode': 384}) => {"checksum": "2203ad1530a3bc06732043ba67d129b5364505ce", "details": "bad symbolic permission for mode: 384", "failed": true, "gid": 91, "group": "tomcat", "item": {"dest": "/etc/tomcat7", "mode": 384, "src": "jmxremote.password"}, "mode": "0644", "msg": "mode must be in octal or symbolic form", "owner": "tomcat", "path": "/etc/tomcat7/jmxremote.password", "size": 52, "state": "file", "uid": 91}
...ignoring

Obviously, mode 0600 works on the command line of my EC2 instance:

ec2-user@devops-01 ~]$ sudo chmod 0600 /etc/tomcat7/jmxremote.password
ec2-user@devops-01 ~]$ ls -l /etc/tomcat7/jmxremote.password
-rw------- 1 tomcat tomcat 52 Oct 28 16:18 /etc/tomcat7/jmxremote.password

So what gives? Is this an Ansible bug or am I missing something?

Best Answer

This is obviously a bug in Ansible. To me the code seems fine. According to this GitHub Issue the error can be worked around by setting the octal for modeas a string. Like this: 0644 "0644"

So I would try this:

with_items:
 - { src: logrotate-tomcat7, dest: /etc/logrotate.d/tomcat7, mode: "0644" }
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