Installing Ansible Runner

Ansible Runner is provided from several different locations depending on how you want to use it.

Using pip

Python 2.7+ and 3.6+ are supported and installable via pip:

$ pip install ansible-runner

Fedora

To install from the latest Fedora sources:

$ dnf install python-ansible-runner

Debian

Add an ansible-runner repository:

$ apt-get update
$ echo 'deb https://releases.ansible.com/ansible-runner/deb/ <trusty|xenial|stretch> main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ansible.list

Add a key:

$ apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 3DD29021

Install the package:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install ansible-runner

From source

Check out the source code from github:

$ git clone git://github.com/ansible/ansible-runner

Or download from the releases page

Then install:

$ python setup.py install

OR:

$ pip install .

Build the distribution

To produce an installable wheel file:

make dist

To produce a distribution tarball:

make sdist

Building the base container image

Make sure the wheel distribution is built (see Build the distribution) and run:

make image

Building the RPM

The RPM build uses a container image to bootstrap the environment in order to produce the RPM. Make sure you have docker installed and proceed with:

make rpm

Changelog

1.4.6 (2020-03-26)

  • Fixed a bug that broke Ansible playbook execution prior to version 2.8 of Ansible.

1.4.5 (2020-03-19)

  • Fix an issue with –process_isoloation_*_ paths parsing cli args

  • Switch default docker images to centos:8

  • Switch extravar format so we can support more than just string types

  • Make sure job events folder is created earlier to prevent errors when using immediately after starting a runner job

  • Annotate all runner_on events with start/end/duration times

1.4.4 (2019-10-25)

  • Fix some unicode issues when using command line override on python 2.7

  • Fix an issue with file handles not closing on the pexpect pty

  • Fix missing ssh_key parameter from module interface

  • Fix a bug where the ssh agent process would hang around after process isolation exit causing a failure to remove temporary directories

1.4.2 (2019-10-04)

  • Reverted ansible-runner –version to print a semantic version number

1.4.1 (2019-10-03)

  • Fixed a bug that prevented ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING from being respected

1.4.0 (2019-09-20)

  • Added changed count to stats data

  • Added initial support for gathering performance statistics using the system’s cgroup interface

  • Fix command line args override missing from module run kwargs

  • Omit inventory argument entirely if no inventory content is supplied this allows ansible to pick up inventory from implicit locations and ansible.cfg

  • Fix an issue where Runner wouldn’t properly clean up process isolation temporary directories

  • Fix error generated if unsafe parameter is used on vars prompt tasks

  • Fix an issue where additional callback plugins weren’t being used when defined in the environment

  • Fix an issue where Runner would stop returning events after the playbook finished when using run_async

  • Fix an issue where unicode in task data would cause Runner to fail

  • Fix issues using vaulted data that would cause Runner to fail

  • Fix an issue where artifact-dir was only allowed in ad-hoc mode

1.3.4 (2019-04-25)

  • Removed an explicit version pin of the six library (which is unavailable in certain Linux distributions).

  • Fixed an event handling bug in the callback plugin in Ansible2.9+

1.3.3 (2019-04-22)

  • Fix various issues involving unicode input and output

  • Fix an issue where cancelling execution could cause an error rather than assigning the proper return code and exiting cleanly

  • Fix various errors that would cause Runner to silently exit if some dependencies weren’t met or some commands weren’t available

  • Fix an issue where the job_events directory wasn’t created and would result in no output for non-ansible commands

1.3.2 (2019-04-10)

  • Add direct support for forks and environment variable in parameterization

  • Fix a bug where unicode in playbooks would cause a crash

  • Fix a bug where unicode in environment variables would cause a crash

  • Capture command and cwd as part of the artifacts delivered for the job

  • Automatically remove process isolation temp directories

  • Fail more gracefully if ansible and/or bubblewrap isn’t available at startup

  • Fix an issue where verbose events would be delayed until the end of execution

1.3.1 (2019-03-27)

  • Fixes to make default file permissions much more secure (0600)

  • Adding git to the reference container image to support galaxy requests

1.3.0 (2019-03-20)

  • Add support for directory isolation

  • Add Debian packaging support

  • Add fact caching support

  • Add process isolation configuration in the settings file

  • Fix event and display issues related to alternative Ansible strategies

  • Add Runner config reference to status handler callback

  • Add some more direct access to various ansible command line arguments

  • Adding playbook stats for “ignored” and “rescued”

  • Fix loading of some ansible resources from outside of the private data directory (such as projects/playbooks)

  • Fix handling of artifact dir when specified outside of the private data directory

  • Fix an issue where the stdout handle wasn’t closed and not all data would be flushed

  • Fixed extravar loading behavior

  • Added support for resolving parent events by associating their event uuid as parent_uuid

  • Allow PYTHONPATH to be overridden

  • Expand support for executing non-ansible tools

1.2.0 (2018-12-19)

  • Add support for runner_on_start from Ansible 2.8

  • Fix thread race condition issues in event gathering

  • Add Code Of Conduct

  • Fix an issue where the “running” status wouldn’t be emitted to the status callback

  • Add process isolation support via bubblewrap

  • Fix an issue with orphaned file descriptors

  • Add ability to suppress ansible output from the module interface

1.1.2 (2018-10-18)

  • Fix an issue where ssh sock path could be too long

  • Fix an issue passing extra vars as dictionaries via the interface

  • Fix an issue where stdout was delayed on buffering which also caused stdout not to be available if the task was canceled or failed

  • Fix role-path parameter not being honored when given on the command line Also fixed up unit tests to actually surface this error if it comes back

  • Fully onboard Zuul-CI for unit and integration testing

1.1.1 (2018-09-13)

  • Fix an issue when attaching PYTHONPATH environment variable

  • Allow selecting a different ansible binary with the RUNNER_BINARY

  • Fix –inventory command line arguments

  • Fix some issues related to terminating ansible

  • Add runner ident to to the event processing callback

  • Adding integration tests and improving unit tests

1.1.0 (2018-08-16)

  • Added a feature that supports sending ansible status and events to external systems via a plugin interface

  • Added support for Runner module users to receive runtime status changes in the form of a callback that can be supplied to the run() methods (or passing it directly on Runner initialization)

  • Fix an issue where timeout settings were far too short

  • Add a new status and return code to indicate Runner timeout occurred.

  • Add support for running ad-hoc commands (direct module invocation, ala ansible vs ansible-playbook)

  • Fix an issue that caused missing data in events sent to the event handler(s)

  • Adding support for supplying role_path in module interface

  • Fix an issue where messages would still be emitted when –quiet was used

  • Fix a bug where ansible processes could be orphaned after canceling a job

  • Fix a bug where calling the Runner stats method would fail on python 3

  • Fix a bug where direct execution of roles couldn’t be daemonized

  • Fix a bug where relative paths couldn’t be used when calling start vs run

1.0.5 (2018-07-23)

  • Fix a bug that could cause a hang if unicode environment variables are used

  • Allow select() to be used instead of poll() when invoking pexpect

  • Check for the presence of Ansible before executing

  • Fix an issue where a missing project directory would cause Runner to fail silently

  • Add support for automatic cleanup/rotation of artifact directories

  • Adding support for Runner module users to receive events in the form of a callback that can be supplied to the run() methods (or passing it directly on Runner initialization)

  • Adding support for Runner module users to provide a callback that will be invoked when the Runner Ansible process has finished. This can be supplied to the run() methods (or passing it directly on Runner initialization).

1.0.4 (2018-06-29)

  • Adding support for pexpect 4.6 for performance and efficiency improvements

  • Adding support for launching roles directly

  • Adding support for changing the output mode to json instead of vanilla Ansible (-j)

  • Adding arguments to increase ansible verbosity (-v[vvv]) and quiet mode (-q)

  • Adding support for overriding the artifact directory location

  • Adding the ability to pass arbitrary arguments to the invocation of Ansible

  • Improving debug and verbose output

  • Various fixes for broken python 2/3 compatibility, including the event generator in the python module

  • Fixing a bug when providing an ssh key via the private directory interface

  • Fixing bugs that prevented Runner from working on MacOS

  • Fixing a bug that caused issues when providing extra vars via the private dir interface