Question: Semaphore Uses Wrong Ansible Binary

[kupe-dono]

Question

Hello there!

I got some issues lately that I solved but can't figure out why it occurs.
When I run a playbook from Semaphore UI I got this:

2:24:10 PM
ERROR! Unexpected Exception, this is probably a bug: module 'ansible.constants' has no attribute 'CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING'
2:24:10 PM
the full traceback was:
2:24:10 PM
2:24:10 PM
Traceback (most recent call last):
2:24:10 PM
  File "/usr/local/bin/ansible-playbook", line 77, in <module>
2:24:10 PM
    if C.CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING and not _PY38_MIN:
2:24:10 PM
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2:24:10 PM
AttributeError: module 'ansible.constants' has no attribute 'CONTROLLER_PYTHON_WARNING'

It appears that Semaphore uses binaries from "/usr/local/bin" instead of "/usr/bin/".

But the Ansible version installed is well configured to use /usr/bin binaries and works fine in CLI:

ansible [core 2.14.16]
  config file = None
  configured module search path = ['/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /root/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /bin/ansible
  python version = 3.11.2 (main, Sep 14 2024, 03:00:30) [GCC 12.2.0] (/usr/bin/python3)
  jinja version = 3.1.2
  libyaml = True

My temporary fix > create a symbolic link to force semaphore using the right binaries.

Is someone has a explanation about why the UI is using the binaries in /usr/local/bin?

My Config:

• Debian 12
• Ansible last version
• Python 3.11
• Semaphore 2.10.43 installed with dpkg

Related to

No response

[fiftin]

@kupe-dono, this isn’t an issue with Semaphore but rather with your environment.

I suspect Ansible is installed in two different locations on your system, and they appear in a different order within your PATH environment variable.

You can specify PATH environment variable for Semaphore explicitly like in your user's environment.

[kupe-dono]

Thank you very much @fiftin I will look into it, I was wondering if Semaphore was installing its own ansible binaries in /usr/local/bin with dpkg but it seems not. So you're probably right :) the issue is on the server side and not from Semaphore!

[fiftin]

We planning to add Ansible version management to Semaphore. But it will be VENVs, not your system ;)

[PeterFalken]

Thanks @fiftin, for planning on adding Ansible Version Management to Semaphore, I lost the ability to use SemaphoreUI with older machines when I upgraded from 2.10.43 to 2.11.1, ansible-core 2.17+ or later do not support python versions older than 3.7+ on the target hosts, reference here.