# `trellis dotenv` exit status 1

**URL:** https://discourse.roots.io/t/trellis-dotenv-exit-status-1/23875
**Category:** trellis
**Tags:** trellis-cli
**Created:** 2022-09-13T10:52:13Z
**Posts:** 3

## Post 1 by @codepuncher — 2022-09-13T10:52:13Z

Running `trellis dotenv` always returns this output:

```
[✘] Error templating .env file
Error running ansible-playbook: exit status 1
```

Info:  
Manjaro  
Trellis CLI 1.7.0  
Tried using different python versions (3.8, 3.9, 3.10) with pyenv but no luck

```
trellis exec ansible --version
ansible [core 2.12.9]
  config file = /home/work/Code/wordpress/xxx/trellis/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/work/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /home/work/Code/wordpress/xxx/trellis/.trellis/virtualenv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /home/work/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /home/work/Code/wordpress/xxx/trellis/.trellis/virtualenv/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.10.5 (main, Aug 1 2022, 07:53:20) [GCC 12.1.0]
  jinja version = 3.1.2
  libyaml = True
```

Any ideas what may be wrong?

---

## Post 2 by @swalkinshaw — 2022-09-13T18:35:24Z

We should add a way to debug tasks like this which internally use temporary playbooks. You have two options to see more output to help troubleshoot in the meantime:

1. Change the source locally and run the locally built binary. You’d want to change [this line](https://github.com/roots/trellis-cli/blob/29f1171f69d4bfccfc4021cd6afed3453884e649/cmd/dot_env.go#L71) to be:

```
dotenv := command.WithOptions(command.WithUiOutput(c.UI)).Cmd("ansible-playbook", []string{"dotenv.yml", "-e", "env=" + environment})
```

1. Copy the [internal playbook file]([https://github.com/roots/trellis-cli/blob/29f1171f69d4bfccfc4021cd6afed3453884e649/cmd/files/playbooks/dot\_env\_template.y](https://github.com/roots/trellis-cli/blob/29f1171f69d4bfccfc4021cd6afed3453884e649/cmd/files/playbooks/dot_env_template.y)  
ml) to your project and run it manually: `trellis exec ansible-playbook dotenv.yml -e "env=foo"`

The second option is probably much easier to start with.

---

## Post 3 by @codepuncher — 2022-09-14T07:39:15Z

So the problem ended up being two-fold.

The first issue is that my project directory was a symlink to a directory on a drive that was mounted without executable permissions.

The second issue was that I had forgotten to place the `.vault_pass` file (had done many iterations of deleting and trying things so this was an easy mistake).  
Following your second option I was shown the message about vault password file being missing, which is not present in `trellis dotenv`.

Thanks for the help @swalkinshaw. Seems that this is related to [Feature Request: generate .vault\_pass for existing sites · Issue #300 · roots/trellis-cli · GitHub](https://github.com/roots/trellis-cli/issues/300)