Why I could not Ansible ping my testerver? - ansible

Question

I am trying to run example from Ansible Up and Running book.
My playbooks directory
ls
ansible.cfg hosts ubuntu-bionic-18.04-cloudimg-console.log Vagrantfile
hosts
testserver ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=2222
ansible.cfg
[defaults]
inventory = hosts
remote_user = vagrant
private_key_file = .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
host_key_checking = False
Vagrantfile
config.vm.box = "ubuntu/bionic64"
When I try ping
ansible testserver -m ping
I got
testserver | FAILED! => {
"changed": false,
"module_stderr": "Shared connection to 127.0.0.1 closed.\r\n",
"module_stdout": "/bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/python: not found\r\n",
"msg": "MODULE FAILURE",
"rc": 127
}
I can ssh without any problems
ssh vagrant#127.0.0.1 -p 2222 -i /home/miki/playbooks/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-50-generic x86_64)
System information as of Tue May 21 06:39:46 UTC 2019
System load: 0.0 Processes: 108
Usage of /: 18.5% of 9.63GB Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 17% IP address for enp0s3: 10.0.2.15
Swap usage: 0%
Last login: Tue May 21 06:32:13 2019 from 10.0.2.2
Why ansible ping does not work?

Answer 1

From the error message
"module_stdout": "/bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/python: not found\r\n",
it seems the remote host does not have python installed.
Quoting from the requiremet docs
On the managed nodes, you need a way to communicate, which is normally ssh. By default this uses sftp. If that’s not available, you can switch to scp in ansible.cfg. You also need Python 2 (version 2.6 or later) or Python 3 (version 3.5 or later).
Ansible needs python to be present in remote host.
Also, about the usage of ping module, it's not the same as ping shell command.
Try installing python in the remote host (either manually or using raw module) and then re-run the script.

Answer 2

I got the same error as well. Then found this:
"module_stdout": "/bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/python: not found\r\n",
As python is installed in local host, and python is not installed in the remote host, just installed python in the remote host. And found the problem is solved !!!

Answer 3

This is just because you are mixing up ansible ping module and classic ICMP ping command in your terminal which are not equivalent. From the above link
This is NOT ICMP ping, this is just a trivial test module that requires Python on the remote-node.
With the above confusion, you are miss-interpreting the clear error messages you are getting when running the playbook:
First
Shared connection to 127.0.0.1 closed
... which means a connection was first opened and that your host is reachable
Second
/bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/python: not found
... which means that python (required for ansible) is not installed or not in a default path.