Issues getting Ansible to work with Boot2Docker

Question

I'm using an Ansible playbook to manage installation of Docker containers. I have the following playbook, which installs Cassandra:

I want to run this playbook locally, and have it install into Boot2Docker. I am able to SSH into Boot2Docker using the instructions from this answer:

$ ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_boot2docker -p 2022 docker@localhost
                        ##        .
                  ## ## ##       ==
               ## ## ## ##      ===
           /""""""""""""""""\___/ ===
      ~~~ {~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~ /  ===- ~~~
           \______ o          __/
             \    \        __/
              \____\______/
 _                 _   ____     _            _
| |__   ___   ___ | |_|___ \ __| | ___   ___| | _____ _ __
| '_ \ / _ \ / _ \| __| __) / _` |/ _ \ / __| |/ / _ \ '__|
| |_) | (_) | (_) | |_ / __/ (_| | (_) | (__|   <  __/ |
|_.__/ \___/ \___/ \__|_____\__,_|\___/ \___|_|\_\___|_|
Boot2Docker version 1.4.1, build master : 86f7ec8 - Tue Dec 16 23:11:29 UTC 2014
Docker version 1.4.1, build 5bc2ff8
docker@boot2docker:~$

I made an inventory file with the same SSH settings:

[local]
localhost ansible_ssh_port=2022 ansible_ssh_user=docker ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_boot2docker

But when I run the playbook, it fails with the error "/bin/sh: /usr/bin/python: not found":

$ ansible-playbook db-setup.yml -i hosts.local

PLAY [local] ****************************************************************** 

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
failed: [localhost] => {"failed": true, "parsed": false}
/bin/sh: /usr/bin/python: not found
OpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 102: Applying options for *
debug1: auto-mux: Trying existing master
debug1: mux_client_request_session: master session id: 2
Shared connection to localhost closed.


TASK: [Database] ************************************************************** 
FATAL: no hosts matched or all hosts have already failed -- aborting


PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
       to retry, use: --limit @/Users/bryan/db-setup.retry
localhost                  : ok=0    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=1

I still get the error even if "gather facts" is turned off. If I SSH into Boot2Docker, I can see that /usr/bin/python exists:

$ ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_boot2docker -p 2022 docker@localhost
... 
docker@boot2docker:~$ which python

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 17:38

boot2docker ssh "tce-load -w -i python.tcz" does the trick as well (you need internet ;-)) for docker and ansible you will need "docker-py"

Setup pip, login to boot2docker
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
python get-pip.py
pip install docker-py

also add to your inventory file:

dockerhost ansible_connection=ssh ansible_ssh_host=192.168.59.103 ansible_ssh_user=docker ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_boot2docker ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/local/bin/python

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '15 at 20:15

The solution was simple: Python isn't installed by default by Boot2Docker.

To install, run

$ boot2docker ssh "wget http://www.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/tcz/python.tcz && tce-load -i python.tcz && rm -f python.tcz"

I created a script to do this automatically, see https://gist.github.com/bcattle/90e64fbe808b3409ec2f

Issues getting Ansible to work with Boot2Docker

2 Answers2