operatingsystems ambiguity

[gvde]

SUMMARY

Running against a katello 4.3 or 4.4 server my playbook complains about the operating systems to be created/updated:

[WARNING]: While constructing a mapping from /home/k/k202081/git/foreman-ansible/first.yaml, line 1834, column 9, found a duplicate dict key (foreman_operatingsystems). Using
last defined value only.

It seems the problem is that multiple operating systems can have the same name, e.g. AlmaLinux. I have AlmaLinux with major version 8 and no minor version (AlmaLinux 8) and one with minor version 5 (AlmaLinux 8.5)

When adding and syncing AlmaLinux repositories it automatically generates a distribution and operating system "AlmaLinux 8".

The a client host with AlmaLinux 8.5 is registered it automatically generates an operating system "AlmaLinux 8.5" (from puppet facts or subscription manager?)

So this scenario seems standard.

ANSIBLE VERSION

$ ansible --version
ansible 2.9.27
  config file = /home/k/k111111/git/foreman-ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/k/k111111/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.6.8 (default, Nov 17 2021, 16:10:06) [GCC 8.5.0 20210514 (Red Hat 8.5.0-3)]

COLLECTION VERSION

Using latest version 3.3.0 from ansible-galaxy with some patches from pull requests.

KATELLO/FOREMAN VERSION

katello-4.4.0-1.el8.noarch
foreman-3.2.0-1.el8.noarch

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

Playbook

    - role: theforeman.foreman.operatingsystems
      vars:
        foreman_operatingsystems:
          - name: "AlmaLinux"
            major: "8"
            description: "AlmaLinux 8"
            os_family: "Redhat"
            architectures:
              - "x86_64"
            password_hash: "SHA256"
            media:
              - "AlmaLinux 8"
              - "Local AlmaLinux 8"
        foreman_operatingsystems:
          - name: "AlmaLinux"
            major: "8"
            minor: "5"
            description: "AlmaLinux 8.5"
            os_family: "Redhat"
            architectures:
              - "x86_64"
            password_hash: "SHA256"
            media:
              - "AlmaLinux 8"
              - "Local AlmaLinux 8"
           override: disabled

EXPECTED RESULTS

No error and correct configuration of all operating system entities.

[evgeni]

I think your yaml is wrong.

Shouldn't it be

    - role: theforeman.foreman.operatingsystems
      vars:
        foreman_operatingsystems:
          - name: "AlmaLinux"
            major: "8"
            description: "AlmaLinux 8"
            os_family: "Redhat"
            architectures:
              - "x86_64"
            password_hash: "SHA256"
            media:
              - "AlmaLinux 8"
              - "Local AlmaLinux 8"
          - name: "AlmaLinux"
            major: "8"
            minor: "5"
            description: "AlmaLinux 8.5"
            os_family: "Redhat"
            architectures:
              - "x86_64"
            password_hash: "SHA256"
            media:
              - "AlmaLinux 8"
              - "Local AlmaLinux 8"

[gvde]

Yes. You are right. I was already wondering why I got this error. Initially it was a different one which I now get again:

TASK [theforeman.foreman.operatingsystems : Create Operatingsystems] **********************************************************************************************************************************
failed: [foreman8.example.com] (item={'name': 'AlmaLinux', 'major': '8', 'description': 'AlmaLinux 8', 'os_family': 'Redhat', 'architectures': ['x86_64'], 'password_hash': 'SHA256', 'media': ['AlmaLinux 8', 'Local AlmaLinux 8']}) => {"ansible_facts": {"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/libexec/platform-python"}, "ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": false, "error": {"errors": {"name": ["Operating system version already exists"], "title": ["has already been taken"]}, "full_messages": ["Name Operating system version already exists", "Title has already been taken"], "id": null}, "item": {"architectures": ["x86_64"], "description": "AlmaLinux 8", "major": "8", "media": ["AlmaLinux 8", "Local AlmaLinux 8"], "name": "AlmaLinux", "os_family": "Redhat", "password_hash": "SHA256"}, "msg": "Error while performing create on operatingsystems: 422 Client Error: Unprocessable Entity for url: https://foreman8.dkrz.de/api/operatingsystems"}
ok: [foreman8.example.com] => (item={'name': 'AlmaLinux', 'major': '8', 'minor': '5', 'description': 'AlmaLinux 8.5', 'os_family': 'Redhat', 'architectures': ['x86_64'], 'password_hash': 'SHA256', 'media': ['AlmaLinux 8', 'Local AlmaLinux 8']})

In check mode it looks as if it wants to create a new entry even though it already exists... Both operating systems already exist on the server.

[evgeni]

can you show us the output of curl -u admin:changeme https://foreman.example.com/api/operatingsystems?

[gvde]

Here is the output from my new server:

{
    "total": 4,
    "subtotal": 4,
    "page": 1,
    "per_page": 20,
    "search": null,
    "sort": {
        "by": null,
        "order": null
    },
    "results": [
        {
            "description": null,
            "major": "8",
            "minor": "",
            "family": "Redhat",
            "release_name": null,
            "password_hash": "SHA256",
            "created_at": "2022-05-03 17:29:04 UTC",
            "updated_at": "2022-05-03 17:29:04 UTC",
            "id": 3,
            "name": "AlmaLinux",
            "title": "AlmaLinux 8"
        },
        {
            "description": "AlmaLinux 8.5",
            "major": "8",
            "minor": "5",
            "family": "Redhat",
            "release_name": null,
            "password_hash": "SHA256",
            "created_at": "2022-04-25 08:12:21 UTC",
            "updated_at": "2022-04-25 08:12:21 UTC",
            "id": 1,
            "name": "AlmaLinux",
            "title": "AlmaLinux 8.5"
        },
        {
            "description": null,
            "major": "7",
            "minor": "",
            "family": "Redhat",
            "release_name": null,
            "password_hash": "SHA256",
            "created_at": "2022-04-26 14:46:15 UTC",
            "updated_at": "2022-04-26 14:46:15 UTC",
            "id": 2,
            "name": "CentOS",
            "title": "CentOS 7"
        },
        {
            "description": null,
            "major": "8",
            "minor": "",
            "family": "Redhat",
            "release_name": null,
            "password_hash": "SHA256",
            "created_at": "2022-05-04 09:04:05 UTC",
            "updated_at": "2022-05-04 09:04:05 UTC",
            "id": 4,
            "name": "CentOS_Stream",
            "title": "CentOS_Stream 8"
        }
    ]
}

[evgeni]

Oooh, mhh. Operating systems in Foreman are super weird, so we have some crude logic to search for them. It goes essentially like this: "try to find by description, if that fails, look up by name/major/minor".

Now your playbook sets description to "AlmaLinux 8" but the currently existing OS doesn't have that set, so it's not finding it by that (fine!). Next it should try name/major/minor (you didn't set minor, so that would be not taken into the search), so the search string should be name="AlmaLinux" major="8" and I would think it should find it like that, but it does not :(

The 8.5 search works, as there it already finds it by description.

(Did I mention I hate how OSes are implemented?)

[evgeni]

Got it!

It searches for "name=AlmaLinux,major=8", but that returns two results, and thus it discards the result.

[evgeni]

diff --git plugins/modules/operatingsystem.py plugins/modules/operatingsystem.py
index 69d70d3d..0be9e478 100644
--- plugins/modules/operatingsystem.py
+++ plugins/modules/operatingsystem.py
@@ -211,7 +211,7 @@ def main():
         entity = None
         # If we have a description, search for it
         if 'description' in module_params and module_params['description'] != '':
-            search_string = 'description="{0}"'.format(module_params['description'])
+            search_string = 'description="{0}" or title="{0}"'.format(module_params['description'], module_params['description'])
             entity = module.find_resource('operatingsystems', search_string, failsafe=True)
         # If we did not yet find a unique OS, search by name & version
         # In case of state == absent, those information might be missing, we assume that we did not find an operatingsytem to delete then

This should fix the issue for you.

[gvde]

Got it!

It searches for "name=AlmaLinux,major=8", but that returns two results, and thus it discards the result.

Shouldn't it possible to distinguish between searching for major=8,minor=null and major=8,minor=*?

[evgeni]

Shouldn't it possible to distinguish between searching for major=8,minor=null and major=8,minor=*?

See my explanation in #1407 on why this is not as trivial as it sounds (TL;DR: minor can be null, minor can be an empty string)

[evgeni]

Oh, actually, it can not. It's always an empty string then:
https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/blob/75e7c0bf6d3fa1049931ec9000a0819e72201a05/app/models/operatingsystem.rb#L377-L382