By setting ansible_python_interpreter for these fictious hosts we avoid
Ansible trying and failing to connect to them in a attempt to populate
ansible_facts.discovered_interpreter_python. This speeds up these tests by
avoiding a timeout.
It is also a necessary pre-requisite for Ansible 10 (ansible-core 2.17). In
that release no hardcoded fallback is used, failure to determine a valid
Python interpreter is a fatal error.
refs #1074
CentOS 8 has reached EOL. Packages are no longer mirrored or maintained. A
historic snapshot of the packages is kept on vault.centos.org.
refs #1088, #1090
Until Ansible 2.9 it looks like ansible_become_password had higher priority.
From Ansible 2.10 ansible_become_pass has higher priority [1]. Mitogen was not
respecting this.
I may need to rework this further, instatiating the become plugin may have
slowed down execution.
[1] Based on testing with
```
[ubuntus]
become-pass-pass ansible_become_pass=1234
become-pass-password ansible_become_password=1234
become-pass-both ansible_become_password=wrong ansible_become_pass=1234
[ubuntus:vars]
ansible_host=ubuntu2004.local
ansible_user=ubuntu
```
```
- hosts: ubuntus
gather_facts: false
become: true
tasks:
- ping:
```
The idea behind transport=smart is to select between paramiko and
OpenSSH given the availability of connection multiplexing and/or OSX
kernel bugs. We need to make no such choice.
This was needed at some point in the past, but the tests don't seem to
care about it any more. We'll fix any CI breakage by changing the tests,
since verifying implicit localhost behaviour is important.
Alex Willmer