{"id":6254,"date":"2020-04-29T10:19:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T16:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregsowell.com\/?p=6254"},"modified":"2020-04-29T10:19:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T16:19:45","slug":"ansible-routeros-module-quirk-with-commas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/?p=6254","title":{"rendered":"Ansible Routeros Module Quirk With Commas"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you are using commas in a playbook with Ansible on the routeros module you will have a bad time unless you do this one special trick.<\/p>\n

First here’s my example playbook:<\/p>\n

---\r\n- name: wlan2 radio tuning\r\n  connection: network_cli\r\n  gather_facts: false\r\n  hosts: mtk3\r\n\r\n  tasks:\r\n\r\n    - name: Add vlan config back for user vlans\r\n      routeros_command:\r\n        commands: "\/interface bridge vlan add bridge=bridge1 tagged=ether1 untagged=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5,wlan2 vlan-ids={{ hostvars[inventory_hostname]['user_vlan'] }}"<\/code><\/pre>\n
When I run this it just fails.
\nWhen I run it with debugging -vvv I get:<\/p>\n
fatal: [mtk3]: FAILED! => {\r\n    "ansible_facts": {\r\n        "discovered_interpreter_python": "\/usr\/libexec\/platform-python"\r\n    },\r\n    "changed": false,\r\n    "invocation": {\r\n        "module_args": {\r\n            "commands": [\r\n                "\/interface bridge vlan add bridge=bridge1 tagged=ether1 untagged=ether2",\r\n                "ether3",\r\n                "ether4",\r\n                "ether5",\r\n                "wlan2 vlan-ids=201"\r\n            ],\r\n            "interval": 1,\r\n            "match": "all",\r\n            "retries": 10,\r\n            "wait_for": null\r\n        }\r\n    },\r\n    "msg": "command timeout triggered, timeout value is 30 secs.\\nSee the timeout setting options in the Network Debug and Troubleshooting Guide."\r\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n
You can see that it interprets the “untagged=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5,wlan2” portion as a list and tries to put each one on a separate line, which totally breaks the command.<\/p>\n
I tried a million different things including putting the interface list into an actual list, then joining it back together in the command with the join command:<\/p>\n
   - name: Add vlan config back for user vlans\r\n      routeros_command:\r\n        commands: "\/interface bridge vlan add bridge=bridge1 tagged=ether1 untagged={{ my_joined_list | join(',') }} vlan-ids={{ hostvars[inventory_hostname]['user_vlan'] }}"<\/code><\/pre>\n
But the output shows it does the same thing…:<\/p>\n
fatal: [mtk3]: FAILED! => {\r\n    "ansible_facts": {\r\n        "discovered_interpreter_python": "\/usr\/libexec\/platform-python"\r\n    },\r\n    "changed": false,\r\n    "invocation": {\r\n        "module_args": {\r\n            "commands": [\r\n                "\/interface bridge vlan add bridge=bridge1 tagged=ether1 untagged=ether2",\r\n                "ether3",\r\n                "ether4",\r\n                "ether5",\r\n                "wlan2 vlan-ids=201"\r\n            ],<\/code><\/pre>\n
I eventually found this bug report<\/a>, which explains that the routeros module expects to see a list of commands, so if you just slightly modify the command structure it will interpret things correctly *sigh*<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Here’s the working version of the task:<\/p>\n
    - name: Add vlan config back for user vlans\r\n      routeros_command:\r\n        commands: \r\n          - "\/interface bridge vlan add bridge=bridge1 tagged=ether1 untagged=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5,wlan2 vlan-ids={{ hostvars[inventory_hostname]['user_vlan'] }}"<\/code><\/pre>\n
Notice that all I did was move the command itself to a new line and add the “-” before it.  Now it interprets everything as a single line, ignoring the commas.<\/p>\n
I hope you find this to be useful, and possibly save you a good chunk of time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you are using commas in a playbook with Ansible on the routeros module you will have a bad time unless you do this\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mikrotik","category-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6257,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions\/6257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregsowell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}