"Ensure a list of packages installed" task failed with ansible 2.13

[amberream]

Bug description

I'm installing alfresco community edition 7.2 on CentOS 7 with Python 3.8 and Ansible 2.13. It fails with the following error:

TASK [../roles/repository : Ensure a list of packages installed] ***************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "It appears that a space separated string of packages was passed in as an argument. To operate on several packages, pass a comma separated string of packages or a list of packages."}

The task in roles/repository/tasks/main.yml looks like:

• name: Ensure a list of packages installed
  become: true
  package:
  name: "{{ utils_repo }} + {{ utils_storage[cs_storage.type | default('tmpfs')] }}"
  state: present

Target OS

CentOS 7

Ansible error

TASK [../roles/repository : Ensure a list of packages installed] ***************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "It appears that a space separated string of packages was passed in as an argument. To operate on several packages, pass a comma separated string of packages or a list of packages."}

Ansible context

Paste the output of the following commands:

ansible --version

ansible [core 2.13.3]
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /root/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /root/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /root/.local/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.8.10 (default, Aug 24 2022, 18:42:19) [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-44)]
  jinja version = 3.0.3
  libyaml = True

ansible-config dump --only-changed

ansible-inventory -i your_inventory_file --graph

@all:
  |--@activemq:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@adw:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@database:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@external:
  |  |--@external_activemq:
  |--@external_activemq:
  |--@nginx:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@repository:
  |  |--localhost
  |--@search:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@syncservice:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@transformers:
  |  |--@repository:
  |  |  |--localhost
  |--@ungrouped:

[amberream]

As a work around I deleted that task, but it would be nice to fix it.

[gionn]

Hello,

Ansible 2.13

we are currently testing the playbook with Ansible 2.12.x, so the first suspect could be that in 2.13 it have been deprecated the support to provide the list of packages as a space separated string.

Can you try again after downgrading ansible to 2.12.8?

Please be aware also that in latest master we recently switched from plain requirements.txt to pipenv that should prevents this kind of issues, if you want to give it a try.

[gionn]

The referenced PR build confirms that the issue is caused by ansible 2.13, let's see if there is a way to make both versions happy.

[gionn]

We have got mostly green builds with the now updated development version, for the future we are going to setup a dedicated build for making sure that the playbook will works with the upcoming ansible-core versions.

Thanks for reporting!

[amberream]

Ok great. Btw, I didn't see anywhere in the installation instructions how to restart the alfresco service. It doesn't seem to start up properly when I reboot the machine. Yesterday after installation everything worked fine, but after restarting the machine today I get a 502 bad gateway when I try to go to localhost or localhost/share... Any tips? I'll probably submit a new issue.

I followed the instructions here for a single machine: https://docs.alfresco.com/content-services/community/install/ansible/#local-installation