Ansible Troubleshooting: Destination Does Not Exist Error

How to reproduce the destination does not exist error in Ansible, troubleshooting, and fix to be able to successfully download a file from a URL in a home directory with your Ansible playbook.

Introduction

Welcome to another episode of Ansible Pilot! I’m Luca Berton, and today we’ll dive into troubleshooting Ansible, specifically focusing on the notorious “destination does not exist error.” This error often occurs when attempting to download a file from a URL using Ansible, and it can be a stumbling block for many users. In this article, I’ll walk you through the error, demonstrate how to reproduce it, and provide a fix to ensure a smooth Ansible playbook execution.

The destination does not exist Error

Let’s start by examining the error through a live demo. Below is a simplified Ansible playbook (destinationdoesnotexist_error.yml) that attempts to download a file using the get_url module:

---
- name: Module get_url
  hosts: all
  become: false
  vars:
    myurl…