Cannot create symbolic link in Ansible, says: "folder is not empty, refusing to convert it"

Question

Error:

FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "gid": 0, "group": "root", "mode": "0755", "msg": "the directory /var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-20161213-1927/ is not empty, refusing to convert it", "owner": "root", "path": "/var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-20161213-1927/", "size": 4096, "state": "directory", "uid": 0}

i've also tried creating symlink in /home/ubuntu/ with different directories. force:yes did not work.

Here is the code

- name: Creating symlinks of Products
  file:
    src: /home/ubuntu/productName/
    dest: /var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-{{release_folder}}/
    state: link
    force: yes

I want to create symlink of productName inside simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-20161213-1927

Answer 1

To create a symlink "/home/ubuntu/productName" to your folder "/var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-{{release_folder}}", you must set "/home/ubuntu/productName" in your parameter dest. Final '/' must not be used

About force parameter, use it in two cases:

• the source file does not exist (but will appear later)
• destination exists and is a file (so, we need to unlink the "path" file and create symlink to the "src" file in place of it).

Use this task

- name: Creating symlinks of Products
  file:
    src: /var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-{{release_folder}}
    dest: /home/ubuntu/productName
    state: link

To loop over items, use this task

- name: Creating symlinks of Products
  file:
    src: "/var/www/html/simpleRepoTwo/simpleRepoThree/release-{{ release_folder }}/{{ item.src }}"
    dest: "/home/ubuntu/{{ item.dest }}"
    state: link
  with_items:
  - src: p1
    dest: p1
  - src: p2
    dest: p2