Ansible not executing main.yml

Question

I am using Ansible local inside a Packer script to configure a Docker image. I have a role test that has a main.yml file that's supposed to output some information and create a directory to see that the script actually ran. However, the main.yml doesn't seem to get run.

Here is my playbook.yml:

---
- name: apply configuration
  hosts: all
  remote_user: root
  roles:
   - test

test/tasks/main.yml:

---
- name: Test output
  shell: echo 'testing output from test'
- name: Make test directory
  file: path=/test state=directory owner=root

When running this via packer build packer.json I get the following output from the portion related to Ansible:

docker: Executing Ansible: cd /tmp/packer-provisioner-ansible-local/59a33ccb-bd9f-3b49-65b0-4cc20783f193 && ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR=1 PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 ansible-playbook /tmp/packer-provisioner-ansible-local/59a33ccb-bd9f-3b49-65b0-4cc20783f193/playbook.yml --extra-vars "packer_build_name=docker packer_builder_type=docker packer_http_addr="  -c local -i /tmp/packer-provisioner-ansible-local/59a33ccb-bd9f-3b49-65b0-4cc20783f193/packer-provisioner-ansible-local037775056
docker:
docker: PLAY [apply configuration] *****************************************************
docker:
docker: TASK [setup] *******************************************************************
docker: ok: [127.0.0.1]
docker:
docker: PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
docker: 127.0.0.1                  : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

I used to run a different more useful role this way and it worked fine. I hadn't run this for a few months and now it stopped working. Any ideas what I am doing wrong? Thank you!

EDIT: here is my packer.json:

{
  "builders": [
    {
      "type": "docker",
      "image": "ubuntu:latest",
      "commit": true,
      "run_command": [ "-d", "-i", "-t", "--name", "{{user `ansible_host`}}", "{{.Image}}", "/bin/bash" ]
    }
  ],
  "provisioners": [
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "apt-get -y update",
        "apt-get -y install ansible"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "ansible-local",
      "playbook_file": "ansible/playbook.yml",
      "playbook_dir": "ansible",
      "role_paths": [
          "ansible/roles/test"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Answer 1

This seems to be due to a bug in Packer. Everything works as expected with any Packer version other than 1.0.4. I recommend either downgrading to 1.0.3 or installing the yet to be released 1.1.0 version. My best guess is that this is being caused by a known and fixed issue about how directories get copied by the docker builder when using Ansible local provisioner.