The phrase “I can’t even spell….” is a British phrase which means “I know so little about this that I cannot even pronounce or write the word.”

I wanted to see if I could use Ansible to extract some information from z/OS. There is a lot of documentation available, but it felt like the documentation started at chapter 2 of the instruction book, and missing the first set of instructions.

Below are the instructions to get the most basic ping request working.

On z/OS

Ansible is a python package which you need to install.

pip install ansible-core

This may install several packages

It is better to do this in an SSH terminal session rather than from ISPF -> OMVS. For example it may display a progress bar.

On Linux

Setup

sudo apt install ansible

I made a directory to store my Ansible files in

mkdir ansible
cd ansible

There is some good documentation here.

Edit the inventory.ini

[myhosts]
10.1.1.2

[myhosts:vars]
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/lpp/IBM/cyp/v3r12/pyz/bin/python

Where

• [myhosts]… is the IP address of the remote system.
• [myhosts:vars] ansible_python_interpreter=… is needed for Ansible to work. It it the location of Python on z/OS.

Check the connection

Ansible uses an SSH session to get to the back end.

ssh colin@10.1.1.2

I have set this up for password less logon. Check it works before you try to use Ansible.

Try the ping

ansible myhosts -u colin -m ping -i inventory.ini

Where

• -i inventory.ini specifies the configuration file
• myhosts which sections in the configuration file
• -u colin logon with this userid
• -m ping and issue this command

When this worked I got

10.1.1.2 | SUCCESS => {
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}

The command took about 10 seconds to run.

You may not need to specify the -u information.

What can go wrong?

I experienced

Invalid userid

ansible myhosts -u colinaa -m ping -i inventory.ini

10.1.1.2 | UNREACHABLE! => {
    "changed": false,
    "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: colinaa@10.1.1.2: Permission denied (publickey,password).",
    "unreachable": true
}

This means you got to the system, but you specified an invalid user, or the userid was unable to connect over SSH.

Python configuration missing

ansible myhosts -u colin -m ping -i inventory.ini

This originally gave me

[WARNING]: No python interpreters found for host 10.1.1.2 (tried ['python3.12', 'python3.11',
'python3.10', 'python3.9', 'python3.8', 'python3.7', 'python3.6', '/usr/bin/python3',
'/usr/libexec/platform-python', 'python2.7', '/usr/bin/python', 'python'])
10.1.1.2 | FAILED! => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "module_stderr": "Shared connection to 10.1.1.2 closed.\r\n",
    "module_stdout": "/usr/bin/python: FSUM7351 not found\r\n",
    "msg": "MODULE FAILURE\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error",
    "rc": 127
}

Edit the inventoy.ini and add the ansible_python_interpreter information.

[myhosts]
10.1.1.2

[myhosts:vars]
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/lpp/IBM/cyp/v3r12/pyz/bin/python