Ansible troubleshooting — Error 306: risky-shell-pipe

How to Solve the Ansible Error 306 risky-shell-pipe with bash pipefail

Introduction

Ansible, the renowned automation tool, simplifies the management and configuration of IT infrastructure. While Ansible empowers users with a wide range of modules to streamline tasks, it’s vital to adhere to best practices for creating clean and predictable playbooks. Ansible-Lint, a popular linter for Ansible playbooks, enforces various rules to help you optimize your automation scripts. In this article, we delve into Rule 306, “risky-shell-pipe,” which emphasizes the importance of using the bash pipefail option when employing the Ansible shell module to create pipelines. Setting pipefail ensures that tasks fail as expected if the first command in a pipeline fails.

Understanding Rule 306

Rule 306, “risky-shell-pipe,” is a valuable guideline for Ansible playbook authors. It promotes the use of the pipefail option when creating pipelines with the Ansible shell module. When using pipelines to pass output from one command to another, it’s crucial to set pipefail to ensure the reliability of task execution. The return status of a pipeline should reflect the exit status of the first command in the pipeline, ensuring that tasks fail…