Ansible fails to run ansible.builtin.package_facts

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6 (SLES 15 SP6)

Situation

Ansible is available in the Systems Management module. Running the ansible.builtin.package_facts task fails with an exception.

Example:

Install Ansible
```
zypper install ansible-core
```

Create a minimal playbook

cat ./playbook.yml
- name: Test package_facts
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Run package_facts
      ansible.builtin.package_facts:

Run Ansible

ansible-playbook -i localhost -c local playbook.yml

Exception:

TASK [Run package_facts] *****
An exception occurred during task execution. To see the full traceback, use -vvv. The error was: SyntaxError: future feature annotations is not defined
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "module_stderr": "Traceback (most recent call last):\n  File \"<stdin>\", line 12, in <module>\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 971, in _find_and_load\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 951, in _find_and_load_unlocked\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 894, in _find_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1157, in find_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1131, in _get_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 1112, in _legacy_get_spec\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap>\", line 441, in spec_from_loader\n  File \"<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>\", line 544, in spec_from_file_location\n  File \"/tmp/ansible_ansible.builtin.package_facts_payload_9h98d5e0/ansible_ansible.builtin.package_facts_payload.zip/ansible/module_utils/basic.py\", line 5\nSyntaxError: future feature annotations is not defined\n", "module_stdout": "", "msg": "MODULE FAILURE: No start of json char found\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error", "rc": 1}

Resolution

The resolution is to manually install the missing package for Python RPM bindings:

zypper install python311-rpm

Cause

This exception is thrown because gathering package facts on RPM-based operating systems requires Python RPM bindings. The package ansible-core-2.18.3-150400.9.3.2 is missing a dependency for the package python311-rpm, so it's not being installed automatically when Ansible is being installed.

Status

Reported to Engineering

Additional Information

This has been reported to engineering, so future versions of ansible-core should have that missing dependency included.

Disclaimer

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