Recommend ansible-core 2.16.1 [requires patching validate_vars.yml to use 'loop' instead of 'with_items' with 'assert' conditional templating]

[holta]

ANNC:
https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-announce/c/B7Dg-1mxqjw

CHANGELOG:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/commits/stable-2.16
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.16/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.16.rst

INSTALL:
https://pypi.org/project/ansible-core/2.16.1/
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/releases/tag/v2.16.1

Related:

• Recommend ansible-core 2.16.0, Deprecate EOL'd 2.13.x (both ETA 2023-11-06) #3666

[holta]

CLARIF: 9f00b7b patches roles/0-init/tasks/validate_vars.yml to deal with ansible-core 2.16.1's very strict new disallowing of templated vars in some situations with when, until or assert.

Ansible's official explanations here:

• https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.16/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.16.rst#id7
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.16/porting_guides/porting_guide_core_2.16.html#playbook

Excerpt:

Conditionals - due to mitigation of security issue CVE-2023-5764 in ansible-core 2.16.1, conditional expressions with embedded template blocks can fail with the message “Conditional is marked as unsafe, and cannot be evaluated.”

Conclusion:

Basic smoke-tests now pass installing IIAB onto various versions of Ubuntu...

But please everyone keep an eye on this just in case LARGE-sized IIAB installs (or other IIAB Apps, ETC) might possibly encounter similar Ansible issues in coming days!

[holta]

FYI a LARGE-sized IIAB install smoke test is now underway (on the latest pre-release of Ubuntu Server 24.04) to further validate that ansible-core 2.16.1 hopefully doesn't cause more/other problems.

[holta]

FYI a LARGE-sized IIAB install smoke test is now underway (on the latest pre-release of Ubuntu Server 24.04) to further validate that ansible-core 2.16.1 hopefully doesn't cause more/other problems.

Looking good so far but the 10GB VM ran out of disk space while installing Sugarizer, so I'm now running a more thorough LARGE-size IIAB install test.

[holta]

now running a more thorough LARGE-size IIAB install test.

Completed (success!)

[holta]

CLARIF: 9f00b7b patches roles/0-init/tasks/validate_vars.yml to deal with ansible-core 2.16.1's very strict new disallowing of templated vars in some situations with when, until or assert.

Ansible's official explanations here:

• https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.16/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.16.rst#id7
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-core/2.16/porting_guides/porting_guide_core_2.16.html#playbook

Excerpt:

Conditionals - due to mitigation of security issue CVE-2023-5764 in ansible-core 2.16.1, conditional expressions with embedded template blocks can fail with the message “Conditional is marked as unsafe, and cannot be evaluated.”

Conclusion:

Basic smoke-tests now pass installing IIAB onto various versions of Ubuntu...

But please everyone keep an eye on this just in case LARGE-sized IIAB installs (or other IIAB Apps, ETC) might possibly encounter similar Ansible issues in coming days!

Ansible admitted they screwed up with Mon Dec 4th's release of ansible-core 2.16.1 ;)

IIAB worked around this so we're all set.

But FYI they're suddenly going to release ansible-core 2.16.2 on Mon Dec 11th to clean up the mess:

https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-announce/c/LSZW2qILvbk