start-stop-daemon, services, environment variables, and ansible

So, I have a Java program that runs Ansible. I'd like to run this program as a service. I've written a service script in /etc/init.d that uses start-stop-daemon to run/stop the Java program. I've run into a problem where Ansible fails with this error:

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
fatal: [i-0f55b6a4] => Could not make dir /$HOME/.ansible/cp: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/$HOME'

Ansible is trying to create a temporary work directory under /$HOME but for some reason, $HOME does not evaluate to /home/ubuntu (even though I used --user ubuntu --chuid ubuntu when starting the service), so it looks like Ansible tries to create a directory with the literal name /$HOME. And then it fails, because it lacks the permission to do this. This is not a configurable option, so I did some digging and I *think* I found exactly where Ansible is trying to do this: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/5ce3988d8693357f671f3fbec43b2d3b862db5f6/v1/ansible/runner/connection_plugins/ssh.py#L56 The python snippet, in case that link ever goes bad is: def __init__(self, runner, host, port, user, password, private_key_file, *args, **kwargs): ... fcntl.lockf(self.runner.process_lockfile, fcntl.LOCK_EX) self.cp_dir = utils.prepare_writeable_dir('$HOME/.ansible/cp',mode=0700) fcntl.lockf(self.runner.process_lockfile, fcntl.LOCK_UN) I've tried a couple of things to resolve this, but so far nothing has worked. Some of the things I've tried include: Using /usr/bin/env to set HOME (since my version of start-stop-daemon does not appear to support --env): CMD="/usr/bin/java" CMD_ARGS=#...not really relevant here case "$1" in start) start-stop-daemon --start -b -m --no-close --pidfile $PID_FILE --user ubuntu --chuid ubuntu --exec /usr/bin/env HOME=/home/ubuntu -- $CMD $CMD_ARGS >> $LOG_FILE 2>&1 Alas, this did not work. I tried generating a wrapper script that will set the variable and then execute the main program: case "$1" in start) sudo cat /tmp/runMyProcess.sh #! /bin/bash HOME=/home/ubuntu env $CMD $CMD_ARGS >> $LOG_FILE 2>&1 PROCESS_RUNNER sudo chmod a+x /tmp/runMyProcess.sh start-stop-daemon --start -b -m --no-close --pidfile $PID_FILE --user ubuntu --chuid ubuntu --exec /tmp/runMyProcess.sh The wrapper script looks like this: #! /bin/bash HOME=/home/ubuntu env /usr/bin/java -cp /home/ubuntu/arch3/pancancer.jar com.mypackage.MyClass --some --arguments >> /var/log/myApplication/MyClass.log 2>&1 This also did not work. When the Java program is called directly from the command line, everything works fine. Ansible is being called from a Java program that is being called from start-stop-daemon that is being called from service. I'm not sure how I can propagate an environment variable named $HOME to ansible, and I'm kinda stumped right now.