Ansible CloudFormation Module Can't See S3 Object - amazon-web-services

Question

Using Ansible, I'm trying to upload an AWS CloudFormation template to an S3 bucket, then run the template using the URL that results.
- name: create s3 bucket
s3_bucket:
name: '{{ s3.bucket_name }}'
state: present
register: s3_bucket
- name: stage cloudformation template
aws_s3:
bucket: '{{ s3_bucket.name }}'
object: cloudformation-template-vpc.yaml
src: ../files/cloudformation-template-vpc.yaml
mode: put
register: s3_file
- name: 'call cloudformation with state {{ vpc.state }}'
cloudformation:
stack_name: '{{ vpc.stack_name }}'
state: '{{ vpc.state | default("present") }}'
template: '{{ s3_file.url }}'
register: vpc_ref
But when doing that I get an error:
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'https://mybucket.s3.amazonaws.com/cloudformation-template-vpc.yaml?AWSAccessKeyId=<access-key>&Expires=<a-number>&Signature=<signature>'
(I modified the url obviously. But the real url is in that format.)
Obviously there's an object at that url. Ansible just created it, I'm using the value it gave me back, and I've looked in the S3 bucket via the web console to verify it's there. The object exists. There is "such file or directory".
This might be a permissions issue. I mean, I'm running one continuous Ansible play: upload the file, get the url back, and run using that url. It's all being done as the same IAM role. So I don't see why it would be a permissions issue, but then again I don't really understand S3 permissions, public, private, etc.
Why would this be failing? Why can't Ansible see the object after uploading it?

Answer 1

The source of the problem lies in the error: "No such file or directory". Sometimes you have to take an error more literally than you normally would. In this case, Ansible is right. There is no file or directory with a name that starts with "https://". That's a URL, not a file or directory.
Q: Egads, could it be that dumb?
A: Who you callin' dumb, buddy? The "template" parameter, according to Ansible docs, is for "The local path of the cloudformation template." There's another parameter called "template_url", which is for "Location of file containing the template body. The URL must point to a template located in an S3 bucket." Which is what you're trying to do.
Okay, okay, maybe dumb was too harsh. I just would have expected that you'd specify something for "template" and it would be smart enough to know if it was a URL versus a local path. Lesson learned. Always RTFM.
So given that I originally called the cloudformation module like this:
- name: 'call cloudformation with state {{ vpc.state }}'
cloudformation:
stack_name: '{{ vpc.stack_name }}'
state: '{{ vpc.state | default("present") }}'
template: '{{ s3_file.url }}'
register: vpc_ref
...the way to correct this problem is to change that second to last line like this:
- name: 'call cloudformation with state {{ vpc.state }}'
cloudformation:
stack_name: '{{ vpc.stack_name }}'
state: '{{ vpc.state | default("present") }}'
template_url: '{{ s3_file.url }}'
register: vpc_ref
The second to last line in that block becomes "template_url".