Ansible fails with /bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/python: not found

Question

I\'m running into an error I\'ve never seen before. Here is the command and the error:

$ ansible-playbook create_api.yml

PLAY [straw] **********************         


        

Answer 1

As others said, this is due to missing python2. Other answers here provide a workaround with pre_tasks and gather_facts: no, however if you're on EC2 and you spin up the instance with ansible you can use user_data option:

- ec2:
    key_name: mykey
    instance_type: t2.micro
    image: ami-123456
    wait: yes
    group: webserver
    count: 3
    vpc_subnet_id: subnet-29e63245
    assign_public_ip: yes
    user_data: |
      #!/bin/bash
      apt-get update
      apt-get install -y python-simplejson
    register: ec2

Then people usually wait for ssh to be available like this:

  - name: "Wait for the instances to boot and start ssh"
    wait_for:
      host: "{{item.public_ip}}"
      port: 22
      delay: 5
      timeout: 300
    with_items: "{{ ec2.tagged_instances }}"
    when: ec2|changed

However I've found, that this isn't always long enough as CloudInit is executed quite late in the boot process so the python2 still might not be installed right after ssh is available. So I've added a pause in case the instance was just created:

  - name: "Wait for cloud init on first boot"
    pause: minutes=2
    when: ec2|changed

This will do the job perfectly and as an advantage you're not checking for python2 on every run and you don't have to do any workarounds to gather facts later.

I'm sure other cloud providers provide similar CloudInit functionality, so adapt for your use case.