A Technical I.T./DevOps Blog
Question
You have heard of Group Variables in Ansible. What are they?
Answer
They are like global variables assigned in a modular way (like Ansible roles). They are ideal when you have Ansible playbooks that run against many different servers. Rather than have a regular variable in a playbook, group variables are taken from a group_vars/ directory. To read more about them,
…
Continue reading “What is a group_var or Group Variable in Ansible?”
Problem scenario
Your playbook fails with the following message: “The filter … is invalid…AttributeError: Client Error object has no attribute message”?
What should you do?
Solution
Remove the word “filter” and try your playbook again.
…
Problem scenario
You are using Ansible, and you want a playbook to have a variable with double quotes. The double quotes are disappearing from your echo var1.stdout[:] invocations. How do you get shell/bash commands to have double quotes?
Solution
Rather than “echo” a string with double quotes, use a variable assignment. Do not use this: echo “a \”long string\” for a \”test\” “
Use something like this: coolstring=”a \”long string\” for a \”test\” ” &&
…
Continue reading “How Do You Use Ansible to Have Retrievable Double Quotes ‘”‘ in a Variable?”
Problem scenario
You run a Bash command or an Ansible playbook, but you get stymied by this problem: “unexpected EOF while looking for match `\”‘”
What should you do when you see this message?
Solution
Verify your escape characters have a space after the symbol that they are escaping.
For example, if you have \””
change it to \” “
The escape character may be working on two sequential symbols (without a space).
…
Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot the Error “unexpected EOF while looking for match `\”‘”?”
Problem scenario
You read about a supported data type (defined keys) in Ansible playbooks related to EC-2 servers in AWS. How do you view this data?
Solution
ec2_instance_info:
region: us-west-1
register: vara
debug:
msg: “{{ item.instance_id }}”
loop: “{{ vara.instances }}”
…
Continue reading “What Is the Syntax for Viewing ec2_instance_info Return Values in Ansible?”
Problem scenario
You run an ansible-playbook command but you receive “‘block’ is not a valid attribute for a Play.” What should you do?
Solution
Change the word “block” to “tasks” in your playbook.
…
Problem scenario
You are using Ansible with -vvv to see what Python version it is using. (Or you use ansible –version.) You see an incorrect version of Python being used.
You tried ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3 in your playbook and in the ansible.cfg file. Neither worked.
What should you do?
Solution
In the playbook, find the hosts stanza. Underneath it use this (where python3 is the version you want and “/usr/bin” is the path to it):
vars:
ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3 …
Continue reading “How Do You Change the Version of Python that Ansible Uses?”
Problem scenario
You try to run an Ansible playbook, but you get an error like this: “msg: Aborting target uses selinux but python bindings (libselinux-python) aren’t installed!”
You are using a Red Hat derivative of Linux (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS or Fedora) and Python 3. What should you do?
Solution
Prerequisite
Install pip3. If you need assistance,
…
Continue reading “How Do You Fix the Ansible Problem about “libselinux-python”?”
Problem scenario
You have Python 3 installed, but you do not have pip3 installed. One of the following also apply to your situation:
Problem scenario #1
You run an Ansible playbook. You receive the error message “Aborting, target uses selinux but python bindings (libselinux-python) aren’t installed.”
Problem scenario #2
You run an Ansible playbook.
…
Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot Ansible Errors about SELinux?”
Problem scenario
You have a playbook, and your variables are defined. But you get an error “FAILED ={‘msg”: ‘The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was ‘dict object’ has no attribute ‘Name’…”
What do you do to solve this?
Solution
The variable’s source could be blank. With “ec2_instance_info” the module will connect to AWS.
…