Handling Ansible Core 2.18 Upgrades with RHEL 8.10 Targets

sivel · April 13, 2026, 3:27pm

dnf is effectively unsupported on RHEL8 from ansible-core 2.17+ due to the missing python bindings for dnf on RHEL8 for newer python versions.

2.21 will restore dnf functionality on RHEL8, but will still require at least python3.9 to also be installed on the RHEL8 machines:

github.com/ansible/ansible

Support core packaging operations against older python versions (#86432)

devel ← sivel:dnf-shim

opened 06:04PM - 19 Jan 26 UTC

sivel

+1758 -936

##### SUMMARY This PR aims to allow the core modules to execute against newer… python versions where python bindings are absent, by including a separate file to interact with the older python version where the bindings are available. Effectively, for the case of the `dnf` module, this splits the module into 2 parts, the module, and a custom JSONRPC CLI for performing DNF actions. Included in this PR: - `dnf` - Separate module into module and utility script - `package_facts` - Switch from `rpm` python to `rpm` CLI to list packages - `ansible-test` - Add limited RHEL8 integration test remote supporting Python 3.12 only - `ansiballz` - Add tech preview to embed arbitrary files, not relying on python `import` ##### ISSUE TYPE - Feature Pull Request

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Handling Ansible Core 2.18 Upgrades with RHEL 8.10 Targets

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