Re: [PATCH 09/14] bootlinux: fix os detection for 9p delegated tasks with registered facts

[Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>]

On 10/28/25 3:53 PM, Daniel Gomez wrote:
>>> When using 9P builds, the Linux kernel is built once on the control
>>> host (delegate_to: localhost, run_once: true) and shared to all guests.
>>> The dependency installation tasks reference ansible_os_family which
>>> gets overwritten when gathering facts from localhost, causing the wrong
>>> distribution's packages to be installed.
>> Just curious: Doesn't kdevops already have variables (eg, distro_debian)
>> that contain this state?
> You're spot on.
> 
> To be clear, I don't like this approach, but I couldn't "gather"
> ansible_os_family from the localhost and use it directly. The reason is because
> of the inventory scope we run this playbook on:
> 
> Example:
> 
> make linux
> ...
> + ansible-playbook --limit baseline:dev playbooks/bootlinux.yml \
> '--extra-vars=target_linux_git=/mirror/linux.git target_linux_tree=linux \
> target_linux_ref=v6.15...
> ==> [linux]
> PLAY: BOOTLINUX
> TASK: Gathering Facts [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> ⠀⠀✓ [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> TASK: Import optional extra_args file [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> ⠀⠀✓ [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> TASK: Select the .config file for building the test kernel [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> ⠀⠀✓ [kci-18884852820-153-nvme]
> ...
> 
> That is gathering facts for the baseline and dev groups. Adding localhost (or
> all hosts) shouldn't work either, since we don't want the playbook to run on the
> localhost (controller node), except for some specific tasks. My guess is that it
> worked before because the guest and the localhost (controller node) happened to
> match, but we weren't actually collecting the controller node's facts correctly.

That seems quite plausible.


> That gets me thinking if we should run bootlinux.yml localhosts tasks first with
> a tag (e.g. setup), then run bootlinux on baseline and dev. Or what do you think
> would be the right approach? 

Kconfig controls where the kernel build runs now. It could run a
distinct playbook for 9p (and maybe it does already, I just can't
remember at the moment).


-- 
Chuck Lever