Custom Execution Environment not rendering Jinja2 templates before ios_config

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Hi all,

I’ve built a custom Execution Environment (EE) to handle creating network devices in Cisco ISE. That part works fine. However, when I run this EE with another playbook that previously worked under the stock AWX EE (24.6.1), the play fails.

Here’s the difference I’m seeing:

  • With the stock AWX EE, my playbook uses host_vars and a .j2 template. The template is rendered first, and the resulting commands are passed correctly to cisco.ios.ios_config.
  • With my custom EE, the .j2 file is not rendered. Instead, the raw Jinja syntax ({% my_stuff_here %}) is sent directly to the device as a CLI command.

My question: Is there a way to configure my custom EE so that Jinja templates are rendered before being passed to ios_config? For example, is there something I should add to the EE’s ansible.cfg or image build to ensure template rendering happens the same way it does in the stock AWX EE?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

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So, Although I did a few different things here the one that got me over the hump was adding Jinja2 to my dependencies/requirements.txt and jinja2_extensions = jinja2.ext.do,jinja2.ext.loopcontrols,jinja2.ext.i18n,jinja2.ext.with_ in my files/ansible.cfg. This finally rendered my .j2 files first and would send the correct command to the Cisco CLI

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Hi @Sean_White, thanks for sharing the solution here.

This actually touches on an issue we were discussing recently with the network team,. I will have to check it out myself soon, probably after the holiday break :wink:

FYI: I just moved the thread to the Get Help category.

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Let me know if it works for you!