🗣 DevConf

I'm making the speach about GPT 4 IaC at https://www.devconf.info/cz/ . So, If you have a chance to visit it please ping me - will try to meet in person. otherwise, I'll post the important & interesting sumaries here.

June 12-14, 2025
Brno, Czech Republic

upd:
- schedule https://pretalx.devconf.info/devconf-cz-2025/schedule/
- my speach https://pretalx.devconf.info/devconf-cz-2025/talk/R7VQXB/ will be 2025-06-13 at 15:30 in E104

#speach #news

⚡️ Blackout in Spain & Portugal 2025-04-28

At 12:30, the grid lost over 15GW of power(about 60% of its total load).

❓What caused it? There’s no official answer, possible reason:
1. A short circuit triggered by a fire near a high-voltage line
2. This might destabilize a nuclear plant between Bordeaux and Toulouse
3. The domino effect led to a cascade failure & isolated Spain and Portugal from the rest of Europe

💡 Why did it take so long to restore? Because the system went down completely, operators couldn’t just flip a switch. They had to perform a black start

🛠 What is a black start? you need electricity to make electricity. How it works:
1. Tiny generators(eg diesel-based), kick in first-they don’t need the grid to run
2. They bring online slightly bigger power plants(eg hydro or gas turbines)
3. These medium stations help boot up larger stations like nuclear

Step-by-step, the grid is rebuilt. During that process:
- voltage and frequency must be matched
- the generation and consumption must be aligned

🌍 Terraform + OTC + windows

Surprisingly it was easy to create, but tricky to get access. It's not really well describe in the docs https://registry.terraform.io/providers/opentelekomcloud/opentelekomcloud/latest/docs/resources/compute_instance_v2#encrypted_password-1

1. Create the instance

resource "opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2" "win" {
  name      = "win"
  flavor_id = "s3.large.4"
  # Enterprise_Windows-Server_2025_STD_amd64_uefi_latest
  image_id          = "66b9843e-f662-40b2-a347-da1f99f314da"
  key_pair          = opentelekomcloud_compute_keypair_v2.pubkey.pub_key_name
...
}
...
output "win_admin_password_encrypted" {
  value     = opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2.win.encrypted_password
  sensitive = true
}

2. wait about ~5-10 mins till encrypted_password is reachable
3. Decode the password

echo pass - `terraform output -raw win_admin_password_encrypted | base64 -d | openssl rsautl -decrypt -inkey /path/to/private/key`

Alternative 1:
It's possible to print the password if terraform is able to decrypt

data "opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2" "win" {
  id                    = opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2.win.id
  ssh_private_key_path  = "/path/to/private/key"
}

output "win_admin_password" {
  value     = data.opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2.win.password
  sensitive = true
}

Alternative 2:
If there is cloud init inside, than it can be customized like that:

resource "opentelekomcloud_compute_instance_v2" "win" {
  name      = "win"
  flavor_id = "s3.large.4"
  # Enterprise_Windows-Server_2025_STD_amd64_uefi_latest
  image_id          = "66b9843e-f662-40b2-a347-da1f99f314da"
  user_data         = base64encode(<<-EOF
#ps1
$pwdAdmin = ConvertTo-SecureString "versysecurepassword" -AsPlainText -Force
Set-LocalUser -Name Administrator -Password $pwdAdmin -PasswordNeverExpires:$true
EOF
  )

#terraform #til #otc #windows

🛠 Ansible doesn't support python path with spaces

1️⃣ Jenkins job issue
I have jenkins job to test ansible roles. The job was was moved to the jenkins folder with the space & the error appeared:

<127.0.0.1> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'ANSIBLE_ASYNC_DIR=/home/jenkins_slave/.ansible_async/ /home/jenkins_slave/workspace/Ansible Guild/Snapshot/.venv/bin/python3.12 /home/jenkins_slave/...
failed: [localhost] (item=postgresql-instance) => {
    "ansible_loop_var": "item",
...
    },
    "module_stderr": "/bin/sh: /home/jenkins_slave/workspace/Ansible: No such file or directory\n",
    "module_stdout": "",
    "msg": "MODULE FAILURE\nSee stdout/stderr for the exact error",
    "rc": 127
}

I found that it caused by
1. calling community.docker.docker_container https://github.com/ansible-community/molecule-docker/blob/main/src/molecule_docker/playbooks/destroy.yml which executing
2. the python code https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.docker/blob/main/plugins/module_utils/module_container/module.py which called
3. the python code https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/async_wrapper.py

2️⃣ Reproduce
so it wasn't about the molecule. I decided to reproduce it:

1. Prepare the venv

 mkdir "test dir"
 cd test\ dir/
 export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib64/python3.6/site-packages
 python3.12 -m venv .venv --system-site-packages
 . .venv/bin/activate
 pip3 install --upgrade pip
 pip3 install -r ../example/requirements.txt 

2. Run debug

ANSIBLE_KEEP_REMOTE_FILES=1 ansible  -vvvv -m stat -c local -i 'asd,' asd
...
python3 ./AnsiballZ_stat.py explode

3. check internals

 echo PLATFORM; uname; echo FOUND; command -v 'python3.12'; command -v 'python3.11'; command -v 'python3.10'; command -v 'python3.9'; command -v 'python3.8'; command -v 'python3.7'; command -v 'python3.6'; command -v '/usr/bin/python3'; command -v '/usr/libexec/platform-python'; command -v 'python2.7'; command -v '/usr/bin/python'; command -v 'python'; echo ENDFOUND
PLATFORM
Linux
FOUND
/home/username/test dir/.venv/bin/python3.12
/home/username/.pyenv/shims/python3.9
/usr/bin/python3.8
/usr/bin/python3.6
/usr/bin/python3
/usr/libexec/platform-python
/home/ms/lgonchar/test dir/.venv/bin/python
ENDFOUND

the module detected symlink and caused the issue.

4️⃣ What is the source?
1. .venv/lib64/python3.12/site-packages/ansible/executor/interpreter_discovery.py:60

try:
...
    shell_bootstrap = "echo PLATFORM; uname; echo FOUND; {0}; echo ENDFOUND".format('; '.join(command_list))

2. .venv/lib64/python3.12/site-packages/ansible/plugins/action/__init__.py

found_interpreters = [interp.strip() for interp in match.groups()[1].splitlines() if interp.startswith('/')]
quoted_interpreters = []
for interpreter in found_interpreters:
    if ' ' in interpreter and not (interpreter.startswith('"') or interpreter.startswith("'")):
        quoted_interpreters.append('"%s"' % interpreter)
    else:
        quoted_interpreters.append(interpreter)
found_interpreters = quoted_interpreters

so the idea was to modify the .venv/lib64/python3.12/site-packages/ansible/plugins/action/__init__.py

if ' ' in interpreter:
    interpreter = shlex.quote(interpreter)
async_cmd = [interpreter, remote_async_module_path, async_jid, async_limit, remote_module_path]

It fixed the python detection but also there are some other places were _low_level_execute_command is called and much work to do.

5️⃣ Final
1. Rename the jenkins folder without space
2. Propose to use the first interpreter without spaces https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/82535#issuecomment-2910076878

#ansible #debug #jenkins