exception dynamic inventory when subfolders

[Anasme]

Hello,

I'm trying ansible-cmdb and it seem very nice, thank you.
Unfortunately I encounter an error when reading my inventory:

[root@server:~]# ansible-cmdb -i /etc/ansible/inventories/prod out/ > overview.html
Exception while executing dynamic inventory script '/etc/ansible/inventories/prod/hosts':
[Errno 8] Exec format error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/../lib/ansiblecmdb/ansible-cmdb.py", line 205, in
limit=options.limit, debug=options.debug)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansiblecmdb/ansible.py", line 61, in init
self._parse_hostvar_dir(inventory_path)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansiblecmdb/ansible.py", line 188, in _parse_hostvar_dir
self._parse_hostvar_file(hostname, p)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansiblecmdb/ansible.py", line 196, in _parse_hostvar_file
first_line = open(path, 'r').readline()
IOError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: '/etc/ansible/inventories/prod/host_vars/FQDN/vault'

my inventories tree look like this (exemple of course):
in host_vars I have some server with 2 subfolders like ./server/vars ./server/vault

.
├── group_vars
│   ├── all
│   │   └── 000_cross_env_vars -> ../../../000_cross_env_vars
│   ├── prod_censored_ab
│   │   ├── dns.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_am_expert
│   │   ├── parameters.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_am_pro
│   │   ├── dns.yml
│   │   ├── document.yml
│   │   ├── nginx_vhosts.yml
│   │   ├── parameters.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_xyxyx
│   │   └── document.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_xyxyxy
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_xyxy
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_xyx
│   │   ├── document.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_yy
│   │   ├── document.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_x
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_censored_xy
│   │   ├── dns.yml
│   │   └── censored.yml
│   ├── prod_soft_gitlab
│   │   └── dns.yml
│   └── prod_soft_vc
│   ├── dns.yml
│   └── nginx.yml
├── hosts
└── host_vars
├── server1
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault
├── server2
│   ├── censored.yml
│   └── vault
├── server3
│   ├── dns.yml
│   ├── document.yml
│   ├── nginx.yml
│   ├── censored.yml
│   └── vault
├── server4
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault
├── server5
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault
├── server6
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault
├── server7
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault
├── server8
│   ├── vars
│   └── vault

I want to create a cmdb with your tools to retrieve the basic information that you propose, add all the variables by groups/hosts and some additional facts that I could automate (apache version, tomcat etc.)

Thank a lot for your future help

[fboender]

Hi Anasme!

I'm not sure, but it looks like you're specifying a path to a directory for the -i param, instead of pointing it to the hosts file. If you point -i to the hosts file as shown in your directory listing, it will automatically pick up the group_vars and host_vars dirs in that same dir.

Can you try something like?:

ansible-cmdb -i /etc/ansible/inventories/prod/hosts out/ > overview.html

If that still gives errors, let me know, and I can look into it.

[fboender]

Confirmed that this is a bug in ansible-cmdb.

[fboender]

For now I've "fixed" this by skipping directories in host_vars. Not really a fix, but I'm reworking the parsing of host/group vars and don't want to invest time in properly parsing the myriad of exceptions and hidden features in Ansible inventories in the old code.

[Anasme]

For now I've "fixed" this by skipping directories in host_vars. Not really a fix, but I'm reworking the parsing of host/group vars and don't want to invest time in properly parsing the myriad of exceptions and hidden features in Ansible inventories in the old code.

Hey ! Thank for your reply. Nice to hear you are reworking this part :), I will wait for it, I'm on another project atm. I stay tunned !

[Anasme]

hey @fboender , how are you?
what's new on the redesign of your ansible-cmdb?

[gdevenyi]

Reproduced and fixed in chenri2006/ansible-cmdb#10.

Root cause: your hosts file has the executable bit set, so ansible-cmdb tries to run it as a dynamic inventory script. The exec fails with [Errno 8] Exec format error, that OSError gets caught and printed, and every host in the file is silently dropped.

The fix makes _parse_dyn_inventory() report that it couldn't execute the file at all, so the caller falls back to reading it as a static ini inventory. A script that does run but exits non-zero is left alone — reinterpreting its output as ini would be wrong.

While reproducing this I also hit a second bug in the same function: when a dynamic inventory script exits non-zero, its stderr is relayed with for line in stderr: sys.stderr.write(line). On Python 3 that iterates a bytes object and yields ints, so you get TypeError: write() argument must be str, not int instead of the script's actual error message. Also fixed in that PR.

As a workaround on current releases: chmod -x the inventory file.

(This repo looks dormant since May 2024, so the fix is against @chenri2006's maintained fork.)