Ansible doesn't load ~/.profile

Question

I'm asking myself why Ansible doesn't source ~/.profile file before execute template module on one host ?

Distant host ~/.profile:

export ENV_VAR=/usr/users/toto

A single Ansible task:

- template: src=file1.template dest={{ ansible_env.ENV_VAR }}/file1

Ansible fail with:

fatal: [distant-host] => One or more undefined variables: 'dict object' has no attribute 'ENV_VAR'

Answer 1

Ansible is not running remote tasks (command, shell, ...) in an interactive nor login shell. It's same like when you execute command remotely via 'ssh user@host "which python"' To source ~/.bashrc won't work often because ansible shell is not interactive and ~/.bashrc implementation by default ignores non interactive shell (check its beginning).

The best solution for executing commands as user after its ssh interactive login I found is:

- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: source user profile file
      #become: yes
      #become_user: my_user  # in case you want to become different user (make sure acl package is installed)
      shell: bash -ilc 'which python' # example command which prints
      register: which_python
    - debug:
      var: which_python

bash: '-i' means interactive shell, so .bashrc won't be ignored '-l' means login shell which sources full user profile (/etc/profile and ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.profile - see bash manual page for more details)

Explanation of my example: my ~/.bashrc sets specific python from anaconda installed under that user.