This shouldn't be closed, since this bug report isn't a bug in the yum module, but in core. This was also introduced with 2.1 because of item squashing changes. Everything worked in versions <=2.0.

After having looked at the associated PR and this bug... the bug itself could be fixed by having a try: except around squashing. If any exceptions are thrown, do not squash. That's a simple change because squashing is simply an optimization (one that we're discussing whether to deprecate since users can give the field a list [ using filters to construct the list if necessary ] instead of relying on squashing).

This is probably a good thing to do regardless of whether we accept that PR as there could be other cornercases i nthe squashing code and we can recover from any of those in the same manner.

Hi

I had this task in my role that worked perfectly in 1.8.4 and with 2.0.2 it spat out 'dict object' has no attribute '\x00$'.
- name: Install lastest version of the same grsec kernel that is already installed apt: name=linux-image-{{grsecurity.latest_kernel_versions[item]}}-{{item}} state=installed update_cache=yes cache_valid_time=180 force=no install_recommends=no
when: grsecurity_proc.stat.exists and ansible_kernel|match(".*-{{item}}$")
with_items:
- flavour1
- flavour2
- flavour3
register: grsec_kernel

The vars used above were stored in the defaults:

latest_grsec_kernel_version: '3.14.70-1'
grsecurity: {
....
latest_kernel_versions: {
flavour1: "{{latest_grsec_kernel_version}}",
flavour2: "{{latest_grsec_kernel_version}}",
flavour3: "{{latest_grsec_kernel_version}}",
}
}

With de3f013 the error stopped appearing but it didn't install any package either (it was coloured green indicating no changes were done and indeed no package was installed).

Amazingly it works this way in stock 2.0.2 (without the above patch):

- name: Install lastest version of the same grsec kernel that is already installed apt: name=linux-image-{{grsecurity.latest_kernel_versions[item.flavour]}}-{{item.flavour}} state=installed update_cache=yes cache_valid_time=180 force=no install_recommends=no
when: grsecurity_proc.stat.exists and ansible_kernel|match(".*-{{item.flavour}}$")
with_items:
- { flavour: flavour1 }
- { flavour: flavour1 }
- { flavour: flavour1 }
register: grsec_kernel

Is it just me misusing 2.0.2 or it works not the way you intended? Some simpler cases using with_items: seem to work with non-dict-style items. I guess that it is this dict being used here that gives ansible a headache: {{grsecurity.latest_kernel_versions[item]}}-{{item}}.

@szjur Can you apply this commit in addition to de3f013 and let us know if it works: b75895d ?

I think what's happening is that the squashing function modifies the task.args in addition to returning the new list of squashed values. The fix I applied earlier returned the original list of values in case of an error but did not restore the task.args. This should fix that.

I did something similar to what you're doing with dnf and it errored for me. I think with apt, you're specifying update_cache so it's silently updating the cache and nothing else instead of explicitly throwing an error.

I applied b75895d on top of de3f013 and it now works again with non-dict items :-) I will remove my workaround from the playbook then as I like to keep things simple. Thanks!

Excellent. The fix ha sbeen merged to the stable-2.1 branch and devel. We'll most likely get it into 2.1.0 but will decide on Monday (it will be in 2.1.1 if it doesn't make it into 2.1.0)

This fix made it into 2.1.0. Closing ticket.