SSH Operator Failure in Airflow Job: Runs Fine on Retry Without Changes

[devjak269]

Description:
I am encountering a random issue with the SSHOperator in Apache Airflow. The task fails occasionally with the error:
airflow.exceptions.AirflowException: SSH operator error: exit status = 1

Key Observations:
The job executes successfully upon retry without any changes to the configuration or the server.
Most of the time, the job runs smoothly, but failures occur randomly.
Here is the complete error message:

[2024-11-06, 00:05:06 IST] {taskinstance.py:2890} ERROR - Task failed with exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ubuntu/airflow/venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/airflow/providers/ssh/operators/ssh.py", line 191, in execute
    result = self.run_ssh_client_command(ssh_client, self.command, context=context)
  File "/home/ubuntu/airflow/venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/airflow/providers/ssh/operators/ssh.py", line 179, in run_ssh_client_command
    self.raise_for_status(exit_status, agg_stderr, context=context)
  File "/home/ubuntu/airflow/venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/airflow/providers/ssh/operators/ssh.py", line 173, in raise_for_status
    raise AirflowException(f"SSH operator error: exit status = {exit_status}")
airflow.exceptions.AirflowException: SSH operator error: exit status = 1
[2024-11-06, 00:05:06 IST] {standard_task_runner.py:110} ERROR - Failed to execute job 2097570 for task CleanUpDaily_sftp_files (SSH operator error: exit status = 1; 2118240)

Context:
I suspect the issue could be related to the load on the EC2 instance since multiple jobs were running during the failure. However, other jobs on the same instance were executing successfully at that time.

Questions:

1. What are the possible reasons behind such intermittent failures in the SSHOperator?
2. Could server load or network contention cause this issue? If so, how can I validate this hypothesis?
3. Are there any Airflow or EC2 configurations that can help mitigate such errors?

Any insights into debugging and resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated!