Ansible/python error: No module named ansible.errors

Question

I have installed Ansible using "pip" as a root user on RHEL

python version - Python 2.7.5

Ansible version -

ansible 2.7.4
  config file = None
  configured module search path = [u'/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /bin/ansible
  python version = 2.7.5 (default, May 31 2018, 09:41:32) [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-28)]

whenever I try to use ansible as a different user getting an error

Error:

$ ansible --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/ansible", line 40, in <module>
    from ansible.errors import AnsibleError, AnsibleOptionsError, AnsibleParserError
ImportError: No module named ansible.errors

I find two ansible files located in different places, Is this abnormal? one at /bin/ansible & other at /usr/bin/ansible

$ cd /bin
$ ls -lart ansible
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5837 Dec  9 13:12 ansible
$ cd ansible
-ksh: cd: ansible: [Not a directory]
$ ls -lart /usr/bin/ansible
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5837 Dec  9 13:12 /usr/bin/ansible

Content of /bin/ansible

$ cat /bin/ansible
#!/bin/python

# (c) 2012, Michael DeHaan <michael.dehaan@gmail.com>
#
# This file is part of Ansible
#
# Ansible is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# Ansible is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with Ansible.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

########################################################
from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function)
__metaclass__ = type

__requires__ = ['ansible']
try:
    import pkg_resources
except Exception:
    # Use pkg_resources to find the correct versions of libraries and set
    # sys.path appropriately when there are multiversion installs.  But we
    # have code that better expresses the errors in the places where the code
    # is actually used (the deps are optional for many code paths) so we don't
    # want to fail here.
    pass

import os
import shutil
import sys
import traceback

from ansible.errors import AnsibleError, AnsibleOptionsError, AnsibleParserError
from ansible.module_utils._text import to_text


# Used for determining if the system is running a new enough python version
# and should only restrict on our documented minimum versions
_PY3_MIN = sys.version_info[:2] >= (3, 5)
_PY2_MIN = (2, 6) <= sys.version_info[:2] < (3,)
_PY_MIN = _PY3_MIN or _PY2_MIN
if not _PY_MIN:
    raise SystemExit('ERROR: Ansible requires a minimum of Python2 version 2.6 or Python3 version 3.5. Current version: %s' % ''.join(sys.version.splitlines()))


class LastResort(object):
    # OUTPUT OF LAST RESORT
    def display(self, msg, log_only=None):
        print(msg, file=sys.stderr)

    def error(self, msg, wrap_text=None):
        print(msg, file=sys.stderr)


if __name__ == '__main__':

    display = LastResort()

    try:  # bad ANSIBLE_CONFIG or config options can force ugly stacktrace
        import ansible.constants as C
        from ansible.utils.display import Display
    except AnsibleOptionsError as e:
        display.error(to_text(e), wrap_text=False)
        sys.exit(5)

    cli = None
    me = os.path.basename(sys.argv[0])

    try:
        display = Display()
        display.debug("starting run")

        sub = None
        target = me.split('-')
        if target[-1][0].isdigit():
            # Remove any version or python version info as downstreams
            # sometimes add that
            target = target[:-1]

        if len(target) > 1:
            sub = target[1]
            myclass = "%sCLI" % sub.capitalize()
        elif target[0] == 'ansible':
            sub = 'adhoc'
            myclass = 'AdHocCLI'
        else:
            raise AnsibleError("Unknown Ansible alias: %s" % me)

        try:
            mycli = getattr(__import__("ansible.cli.%s" % sub, fromlist=[myclass]), myclass)
        except ImportError as e:
            # ImportError members have changed in py3
            if 'msg' in dir(e):
                msg = e.msg
            else:
                msg = e.message
            if msg.endswith(' %s' % sub):
                raise AnsibleError("Ansible sub-program not implemented: %s" % me)
            else:
                raise

        try:
            args = [to_text(a, errors='surrogate_or_strict') for a in sys.argv]
        except UnicodeError:
            display.error('Command line args are not in utf-8, unable to continue.  Ansible currently only understands utf-8')
            display.display(u"The full traceback was:\n\n%s" % to_text(traceback.format_exc()))
            exit_code = 6
        else:
            cli = mycli(args)
            cli.parse()
            exit_code = cli.run()

    except AnsibleOptionsError as e:
        cli.parser.print_help()
        display.error(to_text(e), wrap_text=False)
        exit_code = 5
    except AnsibleParserError as e:
        display.error(to_text(e), wrap_text=False)
        exit_code = 4
# TQM takes care of these, but leaving comment to reserve the exit codes
#    except AnsibleHostUnreachable as e:
#        display.error(str(e))
#        exit_code = 3
#    except AnsibleHostFailed as e:
#        display.error(str(e))
#        exit_code = 2
    except AnsibleError as e:
        display.error(to_text(e), wrap_text=False)
        exit_code = 1
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        display.error("User interrupted execution")
        exit_code = 99
    except Exception as e:
        if C.DEFAULT_DEBUG:
            # Show raw stacktraces in debug mode, It also allow pdb to
            # enter post mortem mode.
            raise
        have_cli_options = cli is not None and cli.options is not None
        display.error("Unexpected Exception, this is probably a bug: %s" % to_text(e), wrap_text=False)
        if not have_cli_options or have_cli_options and cli.options.verbosity > 2:
            log_only = False
            if hasattr(e, 'orig_exc'):
                display.vvv('\nexception type: %s' % to_text(type(e.orig_exc)))
                why = to_text(e.orig_exc)
                if to_text(e) != why:
                    display.vvv('\noriginal msg: %s' % why)
        else:
            display.display("to see the full traceback, use -vvv")
            log_only = True
        display.display(u"the full traceback was:\n\n%s" % to_text(traceback.format_exc()), log_only=log_only)
        exit_code = 250
    finally:
        # Remove ansible tmpdir
        shutil.rmtree(C.DEFAULT_LOCAL_TMP, True)

    sys.exit(exit_code)

list:

$ ls -lart /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/errors/
total 36
-rw-------  1 root root  3820 Dec  9 13:12 yaml_strings.py
-rw-------  1 root root 11555 Dec  9 13:12 __init__.py
-rw-------  1 root root  3147 Dec  9 13:12 yaml_strings.pyc
-rw-------  1 root root 11535 Dec  9 13:12 __init__.pyc
drwx------  2 root root    88 Dec  9 13:12 .
drwx------ 17 root root  4096 Dec  9 13:12 ..

can anyone help me in solving it.

Answer 1

In my case, I was using a broken venv. Deactivated it, removed it and reinstalled every thing:

deactivate
rm -rf .venv
python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Answer 2

In my case the problem turned out to be following:

i was executing the command using sudo, which was picking different .ssh/id_rsa.pub compared to what I had posted public key in the ssh-server. This was rightly resulting into permission denied.

This was discovered only by doing (taken from the dump that comes from ansible ping command using -vvv. Note that I have added -v command to ssh, that gives you the hint on what has failed during the login process.

sudo sshpass -d11 ssh -v -C -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o 'User="ubuntu"' -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/root/.ansible/cp/66b206be85 10.115.216.134 '/bin/sh -c '"'"'echo ~ubuntu && sleep 0'"'"''

Answer 3

In my case I was working in a venv in python and that caused Ansible to not find all it's python modules. Might not necessarily be the OP's issue here but it's worth being aware of.

Answer 4

It's because the installation did not make the files in /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible readable by groups or world, meaning that only the file's owner (root in this case) can read them:

$ ls -lart /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/errors/
total 36
-rw-------  1 root root 11555 Dec  9 13:12 __init__.py
#   ^^^^^^ should be -rw-r--r-- for files

You can change this one specific problem with chmod but likely in the future you will want to run umask go-w first in order to keep pip from defaulting to 0600 permissions for files that it writes out

# chmod -R a+rX /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible

The X in that expression is to set the eXecute bit but only for files that already have execute in the user's permissions (so, for directories and executable files, but not for "normal" files; you can read the full story in man 1 chmod)