as you can see from the code snippet below, ansible's executable seems to be ignoring the ansible_python_interpreter variable. Without resorting to an inventory file (this is for a gitlab pipeline based on hashicorp's packer - which calls ansible), how could I enforce ansible to use whatever python version I have? In this case, it's an Ubuntu 18.04, so I want to switch from python-2.7 to python-3.6.

Another related cause couldto be the fact that ansibles pkg (policy?) always installs python-2.7 on bionic.

root@ubuntu18:~# ansible --version
ansible 2.9.27
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = [u'/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 2.7.17 (default, Feb 27 2021, 15:10:58) [GCC 7.5.0]
root@ubuntu18:~# /usr/bin/python3.6 --version
Python 3.6.9
root@ubuntu18:~# ansible --version -e 'ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3.6'
ansible 2.9.27
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = [u'/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 2.7.17 (default, Feb 27 2021, 15:10:58) [GCC 7.5.0]
root@ubuntu18:~#

My last resort seems to be installing ansible using pip3, but that would require a significant rewrite of both the pipeline yaml and packer's json.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

CodePudding user response：

You have not provided any evidence that the parameter is being ignored. ansible_python_intepreter applies to the execution of modules on the targets, not to the execution of Ansible itself.

The Ansible control process always uses the Python interpreter it was installed under; the best way to change this is to change your install process.