How to use Ansible managed nodes without Python

If you remember during the Lab Environment setup with Pre-requisites I had mentioned that Python is a mandatory pre-requisite to be able to work with Ansible. Now not necessarily but you do have a work around to be able to use Ansible managed nodes without Python.

For this demonstration I have removed python from server2 and now I try to collect the uptime from this managed node:

[ansible@controller ~]$ ansible server2 -m shell -a uptime
[WARNING]: No python interpreters found for host server2 (tried ['/usr/bin/python', 'python3.7',
'python3.6', 'python3.5', 'python2.7', 'python2.6', '/usr/libexec/platform-python', '/usr/bin/python3',
'python'])
server2 | FAILED! => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "module_stderr": "Shared connection to server2 closed.\r\n",
    "module_stdout": "/bin/sh: /usr/bin/python: No such file or directory\r\n",
    "msg": "The module failed to execute correctly, you probably need to set the interpreter.\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error",
    "rc": 127
}

As expected, the command execution has failed as it couldn't find a valid interpreter. To overcome such challenges, you can use "raw" module:

For example here we are using raw module to get the uptime of the remote managed node:

[ansible@controller ~]$ ansible server2 -m raw -a uptime
server2 | CHANGED | rc=0 >>
 07:14:38 up  1:50,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Shared connection to server2 closed.

But the existing syntax of python modules which we have learned will not work with raw module.

As per official ansible documentation on raw module:

• Executes a low-down and dirty SSH command, not going through the module subsystem.
• This is useful and should only be done in a few cases. A common case is installing python on a system without python installed by default. Another is speaking to any devices such as routers that do not have any Python installed. In any other case, using the shell or command module is much more appropriate.
• Arguments given to raw are run directly through the configured remote shell.
• Standard output, error output and return code are returned when available.
• There is no change handler support for this module.
• This module does not require python on the remote system, much like the script module.
• This module is also supported for Windows targets.

What's Next

Now next in our Ansible Tutorial we will work with our managed nodes using password instead of passphrase