When ... "ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] <= '9')" evaluates not as expected

Get Help
1

Hi,

RedHat 10 was released in May, and to address subtle differences between RedHat 9 and 10 I thought I could simply use the ‘lte’ construct for RedHat 9:-

     when: (ansible_facts['distribution'] == 'RedHat' and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] <= '9') or
           (ansible_facts['distribution'] == 'OracleLinux' and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] <= '9')


and for RedHat 10 use the following to differentiate:-

 when: (ansible_facts['distribution'] == 'RedHat' and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] == '10') or
       (ansible_facts['distribution'] == 'OracleLinux' and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] == '10')

however, the less than or equal to 9 is evaluating to true for my RedHat 10 deployments, so still tries to run the wrong code and consequently fails.

I wonder is this because the first character ‘1’ of ‘10’ is being evaluated as less than 9, whereas I expect this to evaluate to false. Probably wrong on that, but I’ve tried int without improving things.

Any ideas?

2

What the current code does is lexicographical comparison. You want to operate on integers, not strings:

ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] | int <= 9
2 Likes
3

thanks @mkrizek [Martin]

I thought I tried to int already, but evidently didn’t have it quite right.

i can confirm your solution worked,

thanks for the quick response,

best regards,

4

In fact versions should not be checked like that, but better with the version filter

when: ansible_facts['distribution']  | version('9', ' <=')
5

OK thanks , Ton, I’ll give that a go, ta

6

version is a test (plugin), not a filter so the correct form would be:

ansible_facts['distribution_version'] is version('9', '<=')

In general when using the version test, make sure you have the correct versioning scheme (if available) set for your use case: ansible.builtin.version test – compare version strings — Ansible Community Documentation.

Though I don’t see a problem with checking against distribution_major_version directly if the major version is the only relevant part.

1 Like
7

Yes, you are right.

Just checked in a tiny playbook

8

thanks people, yes this later amendment also works, so also marked as solved, thanks again.