Solvedansible Failure in apt. "Please install python-apt", but it is installed

Issue Type:

• Bug Report

COMPONENT NAME

apt

Ansible Version:

ansible 2.0.0.2
config file = /home/andreas/.ansible.cfg
configured module search path = Default w/o overrides

Ansible Configuration:

No changes to base configuration

Environment:

Ubuntu 14.04

Summary:

I'm running ansible against localhost. I want to use the apt core module to install some libraries. The task fails and gives an error message that python-apt is not installed. But it is installed.

Steps To Reproduce:

I'm running the following playbook using ansible-playbook update_local.yml --ask-sudo-pass

- name: Update local system
  hosts:  127.0.0.1
  sudo: True

  tasks:
    - apt: name=python-boto update_cache=yes

Running sudo apt-get install python-apt gives

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
python-apt is already the newest version.

Expected Results:

I expected the python-boto library to become installed.

Actual Results:

[DEPRECATION WARNING]: Instead of sudo/sudo_user, use become/become_user and make sure become_method is 'sudo' (default). This feature will be removed in a future release. Deprecation warnings can be 
disabled by setting deprecation_warnings=False in ansible.cfg.

PLAY [Update local system] *****************************************************

TASK [setup] *******************************************************************
ok: [127.0.0.1]

TASK [apt] *********************************************************************
fatal: [127.0.0.1]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "Could not import python modules: apt, apt_pkg. Please install python-apt package."}

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
127.0.0.1                  : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=1

I ran into this issue using the local connection mode -c local using ansible from a virtualenv. The difference between a working playbook and the broken virtualenv run is which python interpreter is used. In local mode, it uses the python in the virtualenv which doesn't have the apt packages. This doesn't matter when running the playbook in non-local mode to remote ssh hosts because the remote python is /usr/bin/python. So I set the -e ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python and it worked. The ansible code is still in the virtualenv and used on the driving host.

TL;DR try add -e ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python to make your local ansible runs behave more like remote runs.

Also for what it's worth. This issue also affects the latest release 2.1.2

I compiled python3.7 from the Cpython source code and wanted to use it as the ansible python interpreter on a host machine running Ubuntu 18.

I was able to overcome this "Please install python-apt" issue where I had ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/local/bin/python3.7 set as a host variable on the controlling machine.

On the host machine I first installed libapt-pkg-dev:

sudo apt install libapt-pkg-dev

I cloned the source code for python-apt:

git clone https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt && cd python-apt
git checkout 1.6.2 # check versions via git tag
python3.7 setup.py build
python3.7 setup.py install

And then the "Please install python-apt" error was no longer returned from the host machine to the controlling machine.

I succeeded in running this playbook:

---
- hosts: all
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Update and upgrade apt packages
      become: true
      apt:
        upgrade: yes
        update_cache: yes
        cache_valid_time: 86400 #One day