Rubenerd

I was copying a file on a remote server to another location, to modify with required settings. I often prefer this to using templates, so I’m always working with the latest config.

- name: Move config to expected place
  copy:
  src: "[SOURCE FILE]"
    dest: "[DESTINATION FILE]"
    force: no  ## don't overwrite

But when I ran the playbook:

fatal: [IP]: FAILED! => {  
    "changed": false,  
    "failed": true,  
    "msg": "Unable to find '[SOURCE FILE]' in expected paths."  
}

Turns out, copy transfers from local to remote by default, so it couldn’t find it. If you include the following directive, the source is defined as remote:

[..]
remote_src: yes

Done.