make quick-start fails at init-couchdb on task "find the ip of docker-machine"

[alexkli]

This issue happens on Travis build 412 and I saw it locally on Mac OSX as well.

While on Travis only the latest build fails, locally the previous revision fd35f21 fails for me as well. Maybe it is a recent change in the main openwhisk repository that triggers it, i.e. past Aug 28, 2017.

The command mentioned in the error message from that openwhisk/ansible/setup.yml file is apparently docker-machine ip whisk (or whatever docker_machine_name is set to). If I run that I get:

> docker-machine ip whisk
Host does not exist: "whisk"

My $DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME is actually default. This works:

> docker-machine ip default
192.168.99.100

However, the error message seems more specific about variable names: "Make sure your variable name does not contain invalid characters like '-'". See below.

Specific error message:

The conditional check ''environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir' failed.

The error was:
error while evaluating conditional ('environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir):
Unable to look up a name or access an attribute in template string ({% if 'environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir %} True {% else %} False {% endif %}).

Make sure your variable name does not contain invalid characters like '-': argument of type 'StrictUndefined' is not iterable

The error appears to have been in '/openwhisk/ansible/setup.yml': line 6, column 5, but may
be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.

The offending line appears to be:

  tasks:
  - name: find the ip of docker-machine
    ^ here

End of build:

...

TASK [Gathering Facts] *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Tuesday 19 September 2017  20:43:43 +0000 (0:00:00.222)       0:00:00.223 ***** 
ok: [localhost]

TASK [find the ip of docker-machine] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Tuesday 19 September 2017  20:43:55 +0000 (0:00:11.854)       0:00:12.077 ***** 
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "The conditional check ''environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir' failed. The error was: error while evaluating conditional ('environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir): Unable to look up a name or access an attribute in template string ({% if 'environments/docker-machine' in inventory_dir %} True {% else %} False {% endif %}).\nMake sure your variable name does not contain invalid characters like '-': argument of type 'StrictUndefined' is not iterable\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/openwhisk/ansible/setup.yml': line 6, column 5, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n  tasks:\n  - name: find the ip of docker-machine\n    ^ here\n"}

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

Tuesday 19 September 2017  20:43:55 +0000 (0:00:00.071)       0:00:12.148 ***** 
=============================================================================== 
Gathering Facts ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.85s
find the ip of docker-machine --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.07s
make: *** [init-couchdb] Error 2

[alexkli]

With not much idea how all of this works, I tried to debug around.

Debugging of ansible shows that inventory_dir is not defined in the setup.yml, which might be the problem here.

I added these debug statements to setup.yml:

  - debug: var=inventory_dir
  - debug: var=docker_machine_name
  - debug: var=hostvars[inventory_hostname]

This results in (summarized):

"inventory_dir": "VARIABLE IS NOT DEFINED!"
"docker_machine_name": "VARIABLE IS NOT DEFINED!
[WARNING]: Unable to find '/openwhisk/ansible/db_local.ini' in expected paths. fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"msg": "An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin 'ini'. Error was a <class 'ansible.errors.AnsibleParserError'>, original message: Invalid filename: 'None'"}

I also thought the problem was that docker_machine_name is not being set/passed through (which was set to default). To avoid that, I created a vm named whisk using docker-machine create whisk, but unfortunately that did not make a difference.

It seems the undefined inventory_dir is where the problem lies... afaics from some googling, this variable should always be set.

[ddragosd]

I believe this issue is caused by an ansible version mismatch in the williamyeh/ansible:debian8 which is now : 2.4.0 and previously it was 2.3.0.
💌 ansible 😄

[ddragosd]

thanks for reporting @alexkli . I've opened #52 to fix this issue.