Ansible vs. AlmaLinux 8.9

Heya guys,

I have VM that is running Almalinux 8.9 and I’m not able to update it to 9.x right now (the service running on it, isn’t yet compatible).

Since a week I get the following error on anything I would like to do with the VM.

10.0.46.2 | FAILED! => {
    "changed": false,
    "module_stderr": "OpenSSH_9.7p1, OpenSSL 3.3.0 9 Apr 2024\r\ndebug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config\r\ndebug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 22: include /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/*.conf matched no files\r\ndebug2: resolve_canonicalize: hostname 10.0.46.2 is address\r\ndebug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts' -> '/root/.ssh/known_hosts'\r\ndebug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts2' -> '/root/.ssh/known_hosts2'\r\ndebug1: auto-mux: Trying existing master at '/root/.ansible/cp/29d49e9efe'\r\ndebug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK\r\ndebug2: mux_client_hello_exchange: master version 4\r\ndebug3: mux_client_forwards: request forwardings: 0 local, 0 remote\r\ndebug3: mux_client_request_session: entering\r\ndebug3: mux_client_request_alive: entering\r\ndebug3: mux_client_request_alive: done pid = 119041\r\ndebug3: mux_client_request_session: session request sent\r\ndebug1: mux_client_request_session: master session id: 2\r\nTraceback (most recent call last):\n  File \"<stdin>\", line 107, in <module>\n  File \"<stdin>\", line 99, in _ansiballz_main\n  File \"<stdin>\", line 44, in invoke_module\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 971, in _find_and_load\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 951, in _find_and_load_unlocked\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 894, in _find_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1157, in find_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1131, in _get_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1112, in _legacy_get_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 441, in spec_from_loader\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 544, in spec_from_file_location\n  File \"/tmp/ansible_ping_payload_ywzlbtvi/ansible_ping_payload.zip/ansible/module_utils/basic.py\", line 5\nSyntaxError: future feature annotations is not defined\ndebug3: mux_client_read_packet_timeout: read header failed: Broken pipe\r\ndebug2: Received exit status from master 1\r\n",
    "module_stdout": "",
    "msg": "MODULE FAILURE\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error",
    "rc": 1
}

To get it back to working I created the basic examples of the ansible documentation (the one where you just ping your inventory). Also this fails with the above error message. Everything on the AlmaLinux 8.9 is up to date right now.

My own problem is that this looks all like a mess of errors and failures that I don’t know what the main error on this machine is that I can google for. I hope for a hint to get started with debugging this machine :slight_smile:

Thank you very much!

EDIT: forgot to post the version of ansible I’m using:

ansible:~/ansible_quickstart# ansible --version
ansible [core 2.17.0]
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /root/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.12.3 (main, Apr 18 2024, 07:52:31) [GCC 13.2.1 20240309] (/usr/bin/python3)
  jinja version = 3.1.4
  libyaml = True

ansible-core 2.17 only supports python 3.7+ for target executions. This effectively means that EL8 is not supported. You can install newer python versions on EL8, however they will be missing critical python dependencies such as those for rpm/dnf that will mean you cannot manage packages on those systems.