ERROR! A worker was found in a dead state

[Guy Matz]

Hi!  I have a task which ends simply with:

< TASK [pomerium : Put config file in place] >

 --------------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

ERROR! A worker was found in a dead state

Running with -vvvv has "mux_client_read_packet: read header failed: Broken pipe\r\ndebug2: Received exit status from master 0", but doesn't seem to reveal anything relevant otherwise.

The task definitions is:

  - name: Put config file in place
    template:
        src: "{{ ec2_tags['Tags']|selectattr('Key', 'equalto', 'Role')|map(attribute='Value')|list|first }}.yaml.j2"
        dest: /opt/pomerium/conf/pomerium.yaml
        owner: root
        group: root
        mode: 0644
        backup: yes
    notify:
        - restart pomerium

I have put a debug in place:

  - debug: msg="{{ ec2_tags['Tags']|selectattr('Key', 'equalto', 'Role')|map(attribute='Value')|list|first }}.yaml.j2"

Which gives:

ok: [ec2-52-23-213-95.compute-1.amazonaws.com] => {
    "msg": "pomauthn.yaml.j2"
}

So, it does not seem to be an issue with the jinja.

Any thoughts on how to debug this would be greatly appreciated!!

P.S. -

ansible-playbook --version
ansible-playbook 2.9.12
  config file = /Users/matz/Code/schransible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/Users/matz/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /Users/matz/.virtualenvs/schransible/lib/python3.8/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /Users/matz/.virtualenvs/schransible/bin/ansible-playbook
  python version = 3.8.5 (default, Jul 21 2020, 10:48:26) [Clang 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.62)]

[jbor...@gmail.com]

Looks like you are running on macOS based on the paths in your ansible-playbook --version output. There is a known problem with running Ansible on macOS [1] where certain system calls on the forked Ansible process cause the process to get killed by the kernel. This is a pretty fundamental issue in how Ansible creates the forked processes and how macOS treats those processes. There's not much we can do right for a fix but setting the env var 'OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=yes' may "fix" the problem for now. There are cases where even this env var won't work but it's worth a try.

[1] - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/32554

[spiro.m...@mcgill.ca]

I got the error a few weeks ago.  Turned out the server was running out of memory.