- Change the pypi metadata to specify that Python-2.7 or greater is needed on the controller. This will prevent pip from installing or upgrading to Ansible-2.7 when run under Python-2.6. Python-2.6 users will get Ansible-2.6.x updates instead.
- ec2_group - Sanitize the ingress and egress rules before operating on them by flattening any lists within lists describing the target CIDR(s) into a list of strings. Prior to Ansible 2.6 the ec2_group module accepted a list of strings, a list of lists, or a combination of strings and lists within a list. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45594
- fix nxos_facts indefinite hang for text based output (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45845).
- Fix timer in exponential backoff algorithm in vmware.py.
Bugfixes
--------
- Add ambiguous command check as the error message is not persistent on nexus devices (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45337).
- cloudfront_distribution - replace call to nonexistent method 'validate_distribution_id_from_caller_reference' with 'validate_distribution_from_caller_reference' and set the distribution_id variable to the distribution's 'Id' key.
- fix azure_rm_autoscale module can use dict to identify target (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45477)
- get_url - Don't re-download files unnecessarily when force=no (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/45491)
- get_url - support remote checksum files with paths specified with leading dots (`./path/to/file`)
- loop - Ensure that a loop with a when condition that evaluates to false and delegate_to, will short circuit if the loop references an undefined variable. This matches the behavior in the same scenario without delegate_to (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/45189)
- script inventory plugin - Don't pass file_name to DataLoader.load, which will prevent misleading error messages (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/34164)
- win_group_membership - fix intermittent issue where it failed to convert the ADSI object to the .NET object after using it once
- win_say - fix syntax error in module and get tests working
New Plugins
-----------
Strategy
~~~~~~~~
- host_pinned - Executes tasks on each host without interruption
- dnf - group removal does not work if group was installed with Ansible because of dnf upstream bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1620324
Bugfixes
--------
- Add argspec to aws_application_scaling_policy module to handle metric specifications, scaling cooldowns, and target values. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45235
- Allow arbitrary ``log_driver`` for docker_container (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/33579).
- Fix ec2_group support for multi-account and peered VPC security groups. Reported in https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issue/44788 and fixed in https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45296
- Fix ecs_taskdefinition handling of changed role_arn. If the task role in a ECS task definition changes ansible should create a new revsion of the task definition. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45317
- Fix health check parameter handling in elb_target_group per https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/43244 about health_check_port. Fixed in https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45314
- Fix lambda_policy updates when principal is an account number. Backport of https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44871
- Remove spurious `changed=True` returns when ec2_group module is used with numeric ports. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45240
- Support key names that contain spaces in ec2_metadata_facts module. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45313
- The docker_* modules respect the DOCKER_* environment variables again (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42641).
- corrected and clarified 'user' option deprecation in systemd module in favor of 'scope' option.
- docker_container: fixing ``working_dir`` idempotency problem (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42857)
- docker_container: makes unit parsing for memory sizes more consistent, and fixes idempotency problem when ``kernel_memory`` is set (see https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/16748 and https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42692)
- ec2_vpc_route_table - check the origin before replacing routes. Routes with the origin 'EnableVgwRoutePropagation' may not be replaced.
- elb_target_group - cast target ports to integers before making API calls after the key 'Targets' is in params.
- fixed typo in config that prevented keys matching
- fixes docker_container check and debug mode (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42380)
- import_tasks - Do not allow import_tasks to transition to dynamic if the file is missing (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44822)
- onepassword/onepassword_raw - accept subdomain and vault_password to allow Ansible to unlock 1Password vaults
- win_disk_image - return a list of mount paths with the return value ``mount_paths``, this will always be a list and contain all mount points in an image
- win_psexec - Added the ``session`` option to specify a session to start the process in
Deprecated Features
-------------------
- win_disk_image - the return value ``mount_path`` is deprecated and will be removed in 2.11, this can be accessed through ``mount_paths[0]`` instead.
Bugfixes
--------
- delegate_to - ensure if we get a non-Task object in _get_delegated_vars, we return early (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44934)
- get_url / uri - Use custom rfc2822 date format function instead of locale specific strftime (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44857)
- improved block docs
- include - Change order of where the new block is inserted with apply so that apply args are not applied to the include also (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44912)
- includes - ensure we do not double register handlers from includes to prevent exception (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44848)
- loop - Ensure we only cache the loop when the task had a loop and delegate_to was templated (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44874)
- win_psexec - changed code to not escape the command option when building the args - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/43839
- win_uri: Fix support for JSON output when charset is set
- Allow config to enable native jinja types (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/32738)
- Extends `module_defaults` by adding a prefix to defaults `group/` which denotes a builtin or user-specified list of modules, such as `group/aws` or `group/gcp`
- New keyword `ignore_unreachable` for plays and blocks. Allows ignoring tasks that fail due to unreachable hosts, and check results with `is unreachable` test.
- New yumdnf module defines the shared argument specification for both yum and dnf modules and provides an entry point to share code when applicable
- Remove support for simplejson (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42761)
- Support for running an Ansible controller with Python-2.6 has been dropped. You can still manage machines which use Python-2.6 but you will have to manage them from a machine which has Python-2.7 or Python-3.5 or greater installed. See the `porting guide <https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/porting_guides/porting_guide_2.7.html>`_ if you need more information.
- new yum action plugin enables the yum module to work with both yum3 and dnf-based yum4 by detecting the backend package manager and routing commands through the correct Ansible module for that python API
- Add `is_boto3_error_code` function to `module_utils/aws/core.py` to make it easier for modules to handle special AWS error codes.
- Add use_backend to yum module/action plugin
- Added PrivilegeUtil PowerShell module util to easily control Windows Privileges in a process
- Added capability to skip ssl verification on zabbix host with dynamic inventory
- Added inventory.any_unparsed_is_failed configuration setting. In an inventory with a static hosts file and (say) ec2.py, enabling this setting will cause a failure instead of a warning if ec2.py fails.
- Added new filter to generate random MAC addresses from a given string acting as a prefix. Refer to the appropriate entry which has been added to user_guide playbook_filters.rst document.
- Added the from_yaml_all filter to parse multi-document yaml strings. Refer to the appropriate entry which as been added to user_guide playbooks_filters.rst document.
- Ansible-2.7 changes the Ansiballz strategy for running modules remotely so that invoking a module only needs to invoke python once per module on the remote machine instead of twice.
- Better error handling for depsolve and transaction errors in DNF
- Changed the prefix of all Vultr modules from vr to vultr (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42942).
- Enable installroot tests for yum4(dnf) integration testing, dnf backend now supports that
- Explicit encoding for the output of the template module, to be able to generate non-utf8 files from a utf-8 template. (https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/121)
- File locking feature added, making it possible to gain exclusive access to given file through module_utils.common.file.FileLock (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/29962)
- Fix dnf handling of autoremove to be compatible with yum
- Fixed group action idempotent transactions in dnf backend
- Fixed group actions in check mode to report correct changed state
- In Ansible-2.4 and above, Ansible passes the temporary directory a module should use to the module. This is done via a module parameter (_ansible_tmpdir). An earlier version of this which was also prototyped in Ansible-2.4 development used an environment variable, ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TMP to pass this information to the module instead. When we switched to using a module parameter, the environment variable was left in by mistake. Ansible-2.7 removes that variable. Any third party modules which relied on it should use the module parameter instead.
- New config options `display_ok_hosts` and `display_failed_stderr` (along with the existing `display_skipped_hosts` option) allow more fine-grained control over the way that ansible displays output from a playbook (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41058)
- Removed an unnecessary import from the AnsiballZ wrapper
- Restore module_utils.basic.BOOLEANS variable for backwards compatibility with the module API in older ansible releases.
- Setting file attributes (via the file module amongst others) now accepts + and - modifiers to add or remove individual attributes. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/33838)
- Switch from zip to bc for certain package install/remove test cases in yum integration tests. The dnf depsolver downgrades python when you uninstall zip which alters the test environment and we have no control over that.
- The acme_account and acme_certificate modules now support two backends: the Python cryptograpy module or the OpenSSL binary. By default, the modules detect if a new enough cryptography module is available and use it, with the OpenSSL binary being a fallback. If the detection fails for some reason, the OpenSSL binary backend can be explicitly selected by setting select_crypto_backend to openssl.
- The apt, ec2_elb_lb, elb_classic_lb, and unarchive modules have been ported away from using __file__. This is futureproofing as__file__ won't work if we switch to using python -m to invoke modules in the future or if we figure out a way to make a module never touch disk for pipelining purposes.
- The password_hash filter supports all parameters of passlib. This allows users to provide a rounds parameter. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/15326)
- allow user to customize default ansible-console prompt/msg default color
- aws_caller_facts - The module now outputs the "account_alias" as well
- aws_rds - Add new inventory plugin for RDS instances and clusters to match behavior in the ec2 inventory script.
- command module - Add support for check mode when passing creates or removes arguments. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/40428)
- ec2_group - Add diff mode support with and without check mode. This feature is preview and may change when a common framework is adopted for AWS modules.
- elasticsearch_plugin - Add the possibility to use the elasticsearch_plugin installation batch mode to install plugins with advanced privileges without user interaction.
- gather_subset - removed deprecated functionality for using comma separated list with gather_subset (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44320)
- get_url - implement [expend checksum format to <algorithm>:(<checksum>|<url>)] (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/27617)
- lineinfile - add warning when using an empty regexp (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/29443)
- password_hash is not restricted to the subset provided by crypt.crypt (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/17266)
- passwordstore - Add backup option when overwriting password (off by default)
- puppet - Add support for --debug, --verbose, --summarize https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/37986
- puppet - Add support for setting logdest to both stdout and syslog via 'all'
- roles - removed deprecated functionality for non YAML role specs (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44320)
- roles - removed deprecated special casing functionality of connection, port, and remote_user for role params (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44320)
- service - removed deprecated state=running (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44320)
- shell module - Add support for check mode when passing creates or removes arguments. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/40428)
- sns_topic - Port sns_topic module to boto3 and add an integration test suite.
- ssh - reset connection will show a warning instead of failing for older OpenSSH versions
- to_nice_json - specify separators to json.dumps to normalize the output between python2 and python3 (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42633)
- user - backup shadow file on platforms where the module modifies it directly (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/40696)
- user module - add a sanity check for the user's password and a more helpful warning message (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/43615)
- vault - removed deprecated functionality for insecure VaultAES class (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44320)
- win_chocolatey - Add support for installing Chocolatey itself from a source feed
- win_chocolatey - Add support for username and password on source feeds
- win_chocolatey - Added ability to specify multiple packages as a list in 1 module invocation
- win_chocolatey - Removed the need to manually escape double quotes in the proxy username and password
- win_chocolatey - Will no longer upgrade Chocolatey in check mode
- win_chocolatey - set the rc return value to always be returned, default to 0 https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41758
- winrm - change the _reset() method to use reset() that is part of ConnectionBase
Deprecated Features
-------------------
- Modules will no longer be able to rely on the __file__ attribute pointing to a real file. If your third party module is using __file__ for something it should be changed before 2.8. See the 2.7 porting guide for more information.
- The `skippy`, `full_skip`, `actionable`, and `stderr` callback plugins have been deprecated in favor of config options that influence the behavior of the `default` callback plugin (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41058)
Removed Features (previously deprecated)
----------------------------------------
- The configuration toggle, ``merge_multiple_cli_tags``, has been removed. This setting controlled whether specifying ``--tags`` or ``--skip-tags`` multiple times on the commandline would merge the specified tags or use the old behaviour of overwriting the previous entry. The overwriting behaviour was deprecated in 2.3 and the default value of the config option became merge in 2.4.
-**Security Fix** - Some connection exceptions would cause no_log specified on a task to be ignored. If this happened, the task information, including any private information could have been displayed to stdout and (if enabled, not the default) logged to a log file specified in ansible.cfg's log_path. Additionally, sites which redirected stdout from ansible runs to a log file may have stored that private information onto disk that way as well. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41414)
-**Security Fix** - avoid loading host/group vars from cwd when not specifying a playbook or playbook base dir
-**Security Fix** - avoid using ansible.cfg in a world writable dir.
- Additional checks ensure that there is always a result of hashing passwords in the password_hash filter and vars_prompt, otherwise an error is returned. Some modules (like user module) interprets None as no password at all, which can be dangerous if the password given above is passed directly into those modules.
- Avoids deprecated functionality of passlib with newer library versions.
- Changed the admin_users config option to not include "admin" by default as admin is frequently used for a non-privileged account (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41164)
- Fix alt linux detection/matching
- Fix an atomic_move error that is 'true', but misleading. Now we show all 3 files involved and clarify what happened.
- Fix glob path of rc.d Some distribtuions like SUSE has the rc%.d directories under /etc/init.d
- Fix lxd module to be idempotent when the given configuration for the lxd container has not changed (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/38166)
- Fix the mount module's handling of swap entries in fstab (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42837)
- Fixed an issue where ``ansible_facts.pkg_mgr`` would incorrectly set to ``zypper`` on Debian/Ubuntu systems that happened to have the command installed.
- Fixed runtime module to be able to handle syslog_facility properly when python systemd module installed in a target system. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41078)
- Grafana dashboard module compatible with grafana 5 (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41249)
- On Python2, loading config values from environment variables could lead to a traceback if there were nonascii characters present. Converted them to text strings so that no traceback will occur (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/43468)
- The fix for `CVE-2018-10875 <https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-10875>`__ prints out a warning message about skipping a config file from a world writable current working directory. However, if the user explicitly specifies that the config file should be used via the ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable then Ansible would honor that but still print out the warning message. This has been fixed so that Ansible honors the user's explicit wishes and does not print a warning message in that circumstance.
- The fix for `CVE-2018-10875 <https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-10875>`__ prints out a warning message about skipping a config file from a world writable current working directory. However, if the user is in a world writable current working directory which does not contain a config file, it should not print a warning message. This release fixes that extaneous warning.
- The ssh connection plugin was categorizing all 255 exit statuses as an ssh error but modules can return exit code 255 as well. The connection plugin has now been changed to know that certain instances of exit code 255 are not ssh-related. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41716)
- allow custom endpoints to be used in the aws_s3 module (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/36832)
- allow gathering env exception to work even when injection is off
- always correctly template no log for tasks https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/43294
- ansible-galaxy - properly list all roles in roles_path (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/43010)
- authorized_key now have an option for following symlinks, default behaviour (False) can be changed by setting follow True/False
- basic.py - catch ValueError in case a FIPS enabled platform raises this exception - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44447
- become runas - changed runas process so it does not create a temporary file on the disk during execution
- elasticsearch_plugin - Improve error messages and show stderr of elasticsearch commands
- elb_application_lb - Fix a dangerous behavior of deleting an ELB if state was omitted from the task. Now state defaults to 'present', which is typical throughout AWS modules.
- file module - The touch subcommand had its diff output broken during the 2.6.x development cycle. The patch to fix that broke check mode. This is now fixed (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42111)
- file module - The touch subcommand had its diff output broken during the 2.6.x development cycle. This is now fixed (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41755)
- fix async for the aws_s3 module by adding async support to the action plugin (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/40826)
- fix decrypting vault files for the aws_s3 module (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/39634)
- fix default SSL version for docker modules https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42897
- fix for the bundled selectors module (used in the ssh and local connection plugins) when a syscall is restarted after being interrupted by a signal (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41630)
- fix mail module for python 3.7.0 (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44552)
- fix the enable_snat parameter that is only supposed to be used by an user with the right policies. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44418
- fix the remote tmp folder permissions issue when becoming a non admin user - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41340, https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42117
- flatten filter - use better method of type checking allowing flattening of mutable and non-mutable sequences (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44331)
- gce_net - Fix sorting of allowed ports (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41567)
- get_url - fix the bug that get_url does not change mode when checksum matches (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/29614)
- inventory - When using an inventory directory, ensure extension comparison uses text types (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42475)
- made irc module python3 compatible https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42256
- nclu - no longer runs net on empty lines in templates (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/43024)
- nicer message when we are missing interpreter
- password_hash does not hard-code the salt-length, which fixes bcrypt in connection with passlib as bcrypt requires a salt with length 22.
- pause - do not set stdout to raw mode when redirecting to a file (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41717)
- pause - nest try except when importing curses to gracefully fail if curses is not present (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42004)
- plugins/inventory/openstack.py - Do not create group with empty name if region is not set
- preseve delegation info on nolog https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42344
- remove ambiguity when it comes to 'the source'
- urls - Only assume GET method if data is empty, otherwise POST
- user - Strip trailing comments in /etc/default/passwd (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/43931)
- user - fix bug that resulted in module always reporting a change when specifiying the home directory on FreeBSD (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42484)
- user - use correct attribute name in FreeBSD for creat_home (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42711)
- vars_prompt - properly template play level variables in vars_prompt (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/37984)
- vars_prompt with encrypt does not require passlib for the algorithms supported by crypt.
- vault - fix error message encoding, and ensure we present a friendlier error when the EDITOR is missing (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44423)
- win_chocolatey - enable TLSv1.2 support when downloading the Chocolatey installer https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41906
- win_chocolatey - fix issue where state=downgrade would upgrade a package if no version was set
- win_domain - ensure the Netlogon service is up and running after promoting host to controller - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/39235
- win_domain - fixes typo in one of the AD cmdlets https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41536
- win_domain_computer - fixed deletion of computer active directory object that have dependent objects (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/44500)
- win_domain_controller - ensure the Netlogon service is up and running after promoting host to controller - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/39235
- win_iis_webapppool - redirect some module output to null so Ansible can read the output JSON https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/40874
- win_lineinfile - changed `-Path` to `-LiteralPath` so that square brackes in the path are interpreted literally - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/44508
- win_reboot - fix for handling an already scheduled reboot and other minor log formatting issues
- win_reboot - fix issue when overridding connection timeout hung the post reboot uptime check - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42185 https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/42294
- win_reboot - handle post reboots when running test_command - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41713
- win_security_policy - allows an empty string to reset a policy value https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/40869
- win_updates - Fixed issue where running win_updates on async fails without any error
- win_updates - fixed module return value is lost in error in some cases (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/42647)
- win_user - Use LogonUser to validate the password as it does not rely on SMB/RPC to be available https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/24884
- winrm - ensure pexpect is set to not echo the input on a failure and have a manual sanity check afterwards https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/41865
- winrm - running async with become on a Server 2008 or 2008 R2 host will now work
New Plugins
-----------
Callback
~~~~~~~~
- counter_enabled - adds counters to the output items (tasks and hosts/task)
- logdna - Sends playbook logs to LogDNA
- splunk - Sends task result events to Splunk HTTP Event Collector
Connection
~~~~~~~~~~
- psrp - Run tasks over Microsoft PowerShell Remoting Protocol
Inventory
~~~~~~~~~
- tower - Ansible dynamic inventory plugin for Ansible Tower.
Lookup
~~~~~~
- cpm_status - Get status and parameters from WTI OOB and PDU devices.
- grafana_dashboard - list or search grafana dashboards
- nios_next_network - Return the next available network range for a network-container
New Modules
-----------
Cloud
~~~~~
amazon
^^^^^^
- aws_eks_cluster - Manage Elastic Kubernetes Service Clusters
- cloudformation_stack_set - Manage groups of CloudFormation stacks
