Tag Archives: m1

Creating and using ansible execution engine in Mac – Apple Silicone [M1]

Leave a reply

With ansible 2.x, ansible requires an execution environment to run playbooks.
This was to increase the portability of ansible development. However, with Apple’s new M1/M2 silicone, it has made things rather tricky.

Short Answer:
YOU CAN NOT CREAD RED HAT SUPPORTED ANSIBLE EXECUTION ENGINE in APPLE SILICONE [M1]

Short REASON:
If you decide to use Red Hat’s certified EE minimal images, right at the end, it checks for the validity of the HOST machine.
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4643601

Since I am using a MAC, it won’t find the valid subscription, therefore it will fail with below error;

....
#20 3.932 + /usr/bin/microdnf install -y --nodocs --setopt=install_weak_deps=0 --setopt=rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms.excludepkgs=ansible-core subversion
#20 4.064 
#20 4.064 (microdnf:61): librhsm-WARNING **: 23:54:03.115: Found 0 entitlement certificates
#20 4.075 
#20 4.075 (microdnf:61): librhsm-WARNING **: 23:54:03.128: Found 0 entitlement certificates
...
executor failed running [/bin/sh -c /output/install-from-bindep && rm -rf /output/wheels]: exit code: 1

Longer answer:

YES, you can still create an EE using the community images.

Prerequisites:

  • Brew
  • Ansible
  • Ansible-builder
  • Ansible-navigator
  • docker desktop
  • an environment variable “DOCKER_DEFAULT_PLATFORM=linux/amd64”

Core issues:

  1. Ansible Execution Engine container images are built for x86_64/amd64 whereas MAC M1/M2 are based on arm64
  2. ansible-builder’s default container runtime “podman” is not available in MAC M1

Solutions:

  • Use Docker desktop to emulate x86_64 or AMD64
  • Use an environment variable to set the docker’s default platform to be ’emulated” x86_64/amd64
  • use “–container-runtime docker” option in ansible-builder to switch from the default “podman” to “docker” as the container runtime.

Command to use:

% ansible-builder build --container-runtime docker -v3 -t <EE TAG NAME> <CONTEXT NAME>

Below is the outcome from my command:

Ansible Builder is building your execution environment image. Tags: <EE TAG NANE>
File context/_build/requirements.yml is already up-to-date.
File context/_build/requirements.txt is already up-to-date.
File context/_build/bindep.txt is already up-to-date.
Rewriting Containerfile to capture collection requirements
....
#21 0.362 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     12 Jan 12 09:05 yum.conf -> dnf/dnf.conf
#21 0.362 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   4096 Apr 28  2022 yum.repos.d
#21 DONE 0.4s

#22 exporting to image
#22 sha256:e8c613e07b0b7ff33893b694f7759a10d42e180f2b4dc349fb57dc6b71dcab00
#22 exporting layers
#22 exporting layers 1.3s done
#22 writing image sha256:86e1fe66e05724035fbcf2ecfb3492e70581fd04027ebbe687cad99a00c25d2b done
#22 naming to docker.io/library/<EE TAG> done
#22 DONE 1.3sComplete! The build context can be found at: /Users/david.joo/Documents/ansible/playpan/context

% docker images               
REPOSITORY                   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED          SIZE
<EE TAG NAME>              latest    86e1fe66e057   15 minutes ago   1.22GB