With thanks to some not so stable changes in Ubuntu packaging, the current fact check for a system using systemd is very broken.
For anyone doing multi-platform checks in their code path this is a bit of a disaster. It also makes the service module behave incorrectly, so I think it may be an issue well beyond it.
A bug has been registered: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/19030
Also, two PR’s have been posted which resolve the issue.
Urgent attention to the PR’s would be appreciated, we’re dead in the water for any of our Trusty consumers without this fix implemented. We’ll likely have to implement a bunch of workaround patches anyway just to get by.
For now, I hope this informs others so that they get the chance to stop their mirror updates. 