Ansible: apt: update_cache=yes failing in ansible 1.3 (?)

How are you invoking ansible-playbook, with -K? There was a change in 1.3 that sudo must be explicitly specified as the -K flag will not make tasks use sudo implicitly.

Yeah, I was using -K and using sudo explicitly in most places, but not in
this specific case. So, that is probably the isse.

Very Respectfully,

Dan CaJacob

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 4:23 PM, James Cammarata
[email protected]:

How are you invoking ansible-playbook, with -K? There was a change in 1.3
that sudo must be explicitly specified as the -K flag will not make tasks
use sudo implicitly.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/4140#issuecomment-24619163
.

Ok, I'll let you confirm that and if so we'll close this. Thanks!

Will do. Thanks!

Very Respectfully,

Dan CaJacob

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 4:27 PM, James Cammarata
[email protected]:

Ok, I'll let you confirm that and if so we'll close this. Thanks!

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/4140#issuecomment-24619465
.

Any follow-up on this?

Going to go ahead and close this, if you're still having a problem let us know. Thanks!

I am running into this problem as well. Running 1.3.2 but I don't have old version references to go by.

When using -K I get another failure: ssh connection closed waiting for sudo password prompt.

In the end I need to run this not in interactive mode, so the -K cannot be the final answer.

More detail: running manually: host1.*** is the redacted FQDN

vagrant@ansible-head:~$ sudo -u vagrant ansible-playbook -i inventory ubuntu-apache2.yaml

PLAY [webserver] ********************

GATHERING FACTS ********************
ok: [host1.**]

TASK: [Updates apt cache] ****************
failed: [host1.**] => {"failed": true}
msg: Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation

FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

PLAY RECAP **********************
to retry, use: --limit @/home/vagrant/ubuntu-apache2.yaml.retry

host1.*** : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1

Manually running ansible get's the same error:

vagrant@ansible-head:~$ sudo -u vagrant ansible webserver -i inventory -m apt -a "update_cache=yes
"
host1.*** | FAILED >> {
"failed": true,
"msg": "Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation"
}

@Ravenwater That appears to be a different problem, could you open a new github issue for it? You might also want to ask on the mailing list to see if others have run into that. Thanks!

I'm having a similar problem with ansible 1.3.4.

If I use:

apt: update_cache=yes:

I get the same error message:

msg: Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation

Also when installing a package with the update_cache option:

apt: pkg=openjdk-6-jre-headless state=installed update_cache=yes cache_valid_time=604800

A similar error is shown:

msg: 'apt-get install 'openjdk-6-jre-headless' ' failed: E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

The error appears intermittently. In fact using a set of 50 EC2 virtual machines with ubuntu 12.04 (all using the same base image, ami-e50e888c). The error appears in 5 to 20 depending on the test.

"sudo: true" is specified in the playbook.

This is normally exactly as the message says, either you don't have
permissions to lock the dpkg db or someone else (or you in other process)
has locked it (this happens to me if I control+C in the middle and try
again).

Yes. But using it with 50 VM with the same O.S. with the same configuration in some of them it works and in others it fails. Moreover if i retry the playbook 3 o 4 times finally it works in all the nodes.

@micafer is it possible that other users/processes are calling apt at the same time on those machines?

I'm testing it with a set of 50 VMs specially created for this tests, and I'm the only user in all of them.
I don't know if ubuntu have some internal process (cron or similar) that uses the apt commands.

ubuntu has cronned cache updates daily, normally stepped so as not to
create 'thundering herd' issue, if you have unattended installed and
enabled, you'll also get automatic security updates that will also lock
this.

I would vote for reopening this issue as in real life there is a serious chance for this to happen and ansible should provide a solution for it, a solution what does not involve a human that tries it until it works.

Ubuntu 16.04

For Ubuntu 16.04 user (although I think it might happen in 15.04 as well), Ubuntu ships with unattended-upgrade enabled _by default_. It regularly check for security updates (usually daily), as mentioned by @bcoca. So the solution is to add a task before touching APT:

- name: kill automatic updating script, if any
  command: pkill --full /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade
  become: true
  register: kill_result
  failed_when: kill_result.rc > 1 # rc == 1 if the script is inactive
  changed_when: kill_result.rc == 0

It should be safe, since the script will be launched again later by system.

Just a comment that it didn't work for me, the lock remained in place even with the above command. But as I'm deploying on EC2 I simply updated my base image by manually removing unattended-upgrades.