Conversation

Notices

1. JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 10:48:35 UTC JP Mens

   Simple Web UI for infra management with Ansible playbooks https://polemarch.org (https://github.com/vstconsulting/polemarch) -- awx light? :-)

   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 10:48:34 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     @jpmens Interesting. Just a first impression here but they seem to be using subprocess and Popen to run Ansible. Which is a red flag imho because Ansible lib already has all you need to run Ansible from another software as a library.

     Instead they've opted to execute subprocesses with Ansible. This is prone to errors, limited, slow and it also shows a potential lack of understanding of Ansible internals.

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:28 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     @jpmens Hmm looking at the Ansible Python API docs I might have answered my own question.

     The Ansible Python API can change at any time, breaking backwards compatibility. It's not recommended for external use, in fact they recommend using ansible-runner that you linked to. So maybe I'm wrong about that project, either way I'd rather see a project use Ansible library to minimize overhead of executing external files.

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:29 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     @jpmens Why oh why does no one use the official ansible library to run Ansible plays?!

     https://github.com/ansible/ansible-runner/blob/devel/ansible_runner/runner.py#L7

   • JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:29 UTC JP Mens

     in reply to

     • Stefan Midjich

     @stemid oops ... I would have sworn they did. My bad.

   • JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:30 UTC JP Mens

     in reply to

     • Stefan Midjich

     @stemid it seems nobody wants to integrate Ansible Runner which I looked at a while back https://jpmens.net/2020/02/28/dial-a-for-ansible-and-r-for-runner/

   • JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:31 UTC JP Mens

     in reply to

     • Stefan Midjich

     @stemid FWIW, I've just been directed at https://github.com/ansible-semaphore/semaphore (but have also not looked closer; I'll gladly listen to your comments. :-) )

   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:31 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     @jpmens Yet another case of just running the ansible commands.

     https://github.com/ansible-semaphore/semaphore/blob/develop/lib/AnsiblePlaybook.go#L38

     A decent implementation is basically the design of AWX. Use Ansible lib to execute plays, use Ansible callback plugin to process the output and do all this in async jobs like rq or celery for example. Anything else is just a poor man's Ansible UI.

   • JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:22:32 UTC JP Mens

     in reply to

     • Stefan Midjich

     @stemid I'd only glanced at the shiny presentation; thanks for the heads up.

   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 13:29:22 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     @jpmens This is making me want to write my own UI, with blackjack and ansible library!

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • valhalla (valhalla@social.gl-como.it)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 16:39:27 UTC valhalla

     in reply to

     • valhalla
     • Stefan Midjich
     @stemid ansible was installed systemwide, and sometimes there is a need to install a more recent version than the one in debian stable to be able to use their features.
     
     Also, fixing versions in requirements.txt is pretty bad from a security point of view and is better avoided.
     
     Anyway, if the authors of a library recommend not to use that library, I tend to read that as a strong hint that things will break in horribly to debug ways, and stay. away. from. it.
     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • Stefan Midjich (stemid@mastodon.se)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 16:39:28 UTC Stefan Midjich

     in reply to

     • valhalla

     @valhalla Wasn't it enough to lock the ansible version you were using with requirements.txt? That would at least stabilize dev for you until you can test and upgrade to a new version.

     I still think this is a sad state that everyone are just using system() to run ansible when there is a decent library.

   • valhalla (valhalla@social.gl-como.it)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2022 16:39:29 UTC valhalla

     in reply to

     • Stefan Midjich
     @jpmens @stemid that's also what I saw when I tried to write something that used ansible, and the exact reason why I decided to run the ansible command instead.