Unexpected Exception: name 'basestring' is not defined when invoking ansible2
PythonPython 3.xAnsibleAnsible 2.xPython Problem Overview
I'm trying to execute ansible2 commnads...
When I do:
ansible-playbook -vvv -i my/inventory my/playbook.yml
I get:
> Unexpected Exception: name 'basestring' is not defined the full traceback was:
> Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/ansible-playbook", line 85, in
Here is ansible --version:
ansible 2.0.0.2
config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
configured module search path = Default w/o overrides
And here is python --version
Python 3.4.3
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
Ansible below version 2.5 requires Python 2.6 or 2.7 on the control host: Control Node Requirements
basestring is no longer available in Python 3. From What’s New In Python 3.0:
> The builtin basestring abstract type was removed. Use str instead. The str and bytes types don’t have functionality enough in common to warrant a shared base class. The 2to3 tool (see below) replaces every occurrence of basestring with str.
So the solution is to either upgrade Ansible or downgrade Python.
Solution 2 - Python
basestring is not available in Python 3.:
This can be fixed for python 2.x and 3.x with the following:
try:
basestring
except NameError:
basestring = str
Solution 3 - Python
I ran into this issue using Python 3 with Ansible and solved by forking the dopy project and installing dopy in my ansible script with:
name: git+https://github.com/eodgooch/[email protected]#egg=dopy.
If you are still getting errors be sure to change the version to 0.4.0 and remove any lingering dopy packages from your Python site-packages directory.
Also you could pip3 install git+https://github.com/eodgooch/[email protected]#egg=dopy instead of in your Ansible Task.
Solution 4 - Python
Replace basestring with str. In 2.x basestring is there. but in 3.x the basestring has been replaced with "str".
Solution 5 - Python
The problem might be due to python version. In 2.x, basestring is there but in 3.x it has been replaced with "str".
Solution 6 - Python
Another possible solution is to install future via pip install future and import from past.builtins import basestring.
from past.builtins import basestring
Personally, I'm not crazy about this solution because:
- It requires installing another dependency.
- There are likely other backward compatibility issues mixing Python 3 and 2 code.
- It will only work in your code - you don't want to modify Ansible source code.
I offer it only because it's something I've used in the past to make my own code work in both Python 2 and 3.