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Zuke's avatar
Zuke
Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
Feb 05, 2021

Ansible bigip_command module error message

I'm trying to run a simple playbook to create a link in bash:

---
- name: Issue a command on the F5 devices
  hosts: all
  connection: local
  environment:
    F5_SERVER: '{​​{​​ ansible_host | default(inventory_hostname) }​​}​​'
  gather_facts: false
  
  tasks:
  - name: Issue the command below
    bigip_command:
      commands: 
      - 'ln -sf /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrom'

However when I run this playbook, I'm getting an encoding error in AWX:

{
    "msg": "'latin-1' codec can't encode characters in position 1-2: ordinal not in range(256)",
    "exception": "  

I'm wondering if the playbook is trying to run the command in TMOS rather than bash. Googling for that error returns a lot of Stack Overflow posts re: Python and needing to convert or define the script with UTF-8.

6 Replies

  • Mike_A's avatar
    Mike_A
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

    I have been having issues with BASH commands using the bigip_command module. What I see after the job is run is below. As you can see it is 100%, atleast in my case, abending tmsh -c to any command. The module says it runs bash. I have not been able to figure out how to do it yet.

    "executed_commands": [
     "tmsh -c \\\"netstat -rn \\\" | grep \\\"^0.0.0.0\\\" | grep -v mgmt | awk \\'{print \\$2}\\'"
     ]
     "failed": false,

    Here is what is in my playbook.

     tasks:
      - name: Default Gateway
       bigip_command:
        commands:
         - netstat -rn | grep "^0.0.0.0" | grep -v mgmt | awk '{print $2}'
        provider: "{{ provider }}"
       register: f5_gateway_output
     
     
      - debug:
        var: f5_gateway_output
    • Zuke's avatar
      Zuke
      Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus

      Mike your whitespace looks off. I pasted your playbook as printed above to yamllint.com and got errors. Try this.

      --- 
      tasks: 
        - 
          bigip_command: 
            commands: 
              - "netstat -rn | grep \"^0.0.0.0\" | grep -v mgmt | awk '{print $2}'"
            provider: "{{ provider }}"
          name: "Default Gateway"
          register: f5_gateway_output
        - 
          debug: 
          var: f5_gateway_output
      • Mike_A's avatar
        Mike_A
        Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

        Zuke, even with what you pasted, I get the same response.

         "executed_commands": [
                    "tmsh -c \\\"netstat -rn \\\" |  grep \\\"^0.0.0.0\\\" | grep -v mgmt | awk \\'{print \\$2}\\'"
                ],

        As you can see it is inserting "tmsh -c" before any command that is under the bigip_command module.

        This module says it runs bash, I'm questioning how that is possible when "tmsh -c" is inserted before any command.

        Have you successfully run a bash command with this bigip_command module?

  • Mike_A's avatar
    Mike_A
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

    Just an update, it looks like it runs netstat -rn fine but when adding in the grep and awk statements it doesnt like it.