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paxos1977
Asked: 2020-06-10 12:18:32 +0800 CST

How to use ansible's ipmi_power module?

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I'm trying to power cycle a machine using ansible's ipmi_power module.

The documentation says you need to have pyghmi installed on the host where you are executing the playbook, and I've confirmed I have the module for both python 2 & 3.

[userg@box ~]$ python3
Python 3.6.8 (default, Apr  2 2020, 13:34:55)
[GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-39)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pyghmi.ipmi
>>> quit()

[user@box ~]$ python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Apr  2 2020, 13:16:51)
[GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-39)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pyghmi.ipmi
>>> quit()

I have a role called power_cycle and it is defined like this:

---
- name: "powering down {{ ansible_hostname }}"
  ipmi_power:
    name: "{{ ansible_hostname }}"
    user: "{{ ipmi_user }}"
    password: "{{ ipmi_password }}"
    state: off

And I have a playbook that invokes the role, it looks like this:

---
- name: power cycle
  hosts: boxes

  roles:
    - power_cycle

When I run the playbook, I get an error message:

$ ansible-playbook --limit target_box playbooks/power_cycle.yml

PLAY [power cycle]********************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] ***************************************************************************
ok: [target_box]

TASK [power_cycle : powering down target_box]*****************************************************
An exception occurred during task execution. To see the full traceback, use -vvv. The error was: ImportError: No module named pyghmi.ipmi
fatal: [target_box]: FAILED! => changed=false 
  exception: |-
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/tmp/ansible_ipmi_power_payload_skn3T3/ansible_ipmi_power_payload.zip/ansible/modules/remote_management/ipmi/ipmi_power.py", line 81, in <module>
    ImportError: No module named pyghmi.ipmi
    msg: Failed to import the required Python library (pyghmi) on target_box's Python 
    /usr/bin/python. Please read module documentation and install in the appropriate location. If the 
    required library is installed, but Ansible is using the wrong Python interpreter, please consult 
    the documentation on ansible_python_interpreter

PLAY RECAP***************************************************************************************
target_box : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=1    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

The error message seems to be suggesting I have to have pyghmi installed on the machine I'm trying to manage via IPMI. This seems to contradict the documentation for the ipmi_power module.

What am I doing wrong?

ipmi ansible

1 Answers

  1. I went digging through issues on ansible's github.

    I found an issue with the ipmi_power that had an example of how to use it. You need to use the delegate_to property on the task to ensure it runs locally.

    Changing my role definition to this worked:

    ---
- name: "powering down {{ ansible_hostname }}"
  ipmi_power:
    name: "{{ ansible_hostname }}"
    user: "{{ ipmi_user }}"
    password: "{{ ipmi_password }}"
    state: off
  delegate_to: localhost
    • 2