ansible provisioner fails with "failed to transfer file"

[hc-github-team-packer]

This issue was originally opened by @stefangweichinger in https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/11783 and has been migrated to this repository. The original issue description is below.

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Overview of the Issue

I have a packer config using the virtualbox-iso builder for building Debian VMs. This config uses the ansible provisioner and worked fine before.

Recently I see failed builds because the provisioning step fails:

2022/05/17 07:51:59 ui:     debian.virtualbox-iso.bullseye: failed to transfer file to /home/sgw/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-45402qjbtzya8/tmpeyxtinre /home/vagrant/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1652766718.7643352-45407-8201740687254/AnsiballZ_setup.py:

Reproduction Steps

Run "packer build" with a packer build using the ansible provisioner.

Packer version

1.8.0

Simplified Packer Template

the part with the provisioner:

  provisioner "ansible" {
    playbook_file = "ansible/vagrant-debian-11-guest-additions.yml"
    user          = "${var.ssh_username}"
    ansible_env_vars = [
      "ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=debug",
      "ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False",
      "ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS='-o ForwardAgent=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s'",
      "ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR=True"
      ]
    ansible_ssh_extra_args = [
      "-o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa -o PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-rsa"
    ]
  }

These extra_args come from fixing an issue with ssh not able to log into the created VM. If I comment these vars it fails as well, but with another issue around "host key type" (yes, I found the related issue, that's where my extra_vars come from).

Operating system and Environment details

Fedora 36 Workstation, VirtualBox 6.1.34

 ansible --version
ansible [core 2.12.3]
  config file = None
  configured module search path = ['/home/sgw/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /home/sgw/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /home/sgw/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /home/sgw/.local/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.10.4 (main, Mar 25 2022, 00:00:00) [GCC 12.0.1 20220308 (Red Hat 12.0.1-0)]
  jinja version = 3.0.3
  libyaml = True