Ansible package installation job through Red Hat Satellite 6 fails

Environment

• Red Hat Satellite 6.4 and above

Issue

• Ansible package installation job through Red Hat Satellite 6 failing with one of the below with errors:

fatal: [client.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "No package matching 'tree' found available, installed or updated", "rc": 126, "results": ["No package matching 'tree' found available, installed or updated"]}
	to retry, use: --limit @/tmp/foreman-playbook-13479bf9-359c-4eda-ae99-35c6eaa73066.retry

fatal: [client.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": true, "msg": "You need to be root to perform this command.\n2019-07-04 14:55:51,202 [INFO] yum:31094:Dummy-1 @connection.py:868 - Connection built: host=xxxxxxx port=443 handler=/rhsm auth=identity_cert ca_dir=/etc/rhsm/ca/ insecure=False\n2019-07-04 

Resolution

• Ansible jobs executed through Red Hat Satellite 6 server leverages the embedded remote execution feature.

• Under Administer > Settings > Remote Execution tab, Ensure Effective User is set to root and SSH User can either be root or a non-root user.
  NOTE: They can be same if the user is root.

• Under the Job Invocation page, click on Display advanced fields and fill in the Sudo password and click Submit.
  NOTE: If this Sudo password is set under Administer > Settings > Remote Execution tab or as a Global parameter described below then skip providing the Sudo password again and just run the Ansible job.

• In Red Hat Satellite 6.4 release, Ansible privilege escalation doesn't work because of this bug This content is not included.BZ # 1661483 which is fixed in Red Hat Satellite 6.5 release.

• If Red Hat Satellite version is 6.4 then create ansible_sudo_pass parameter with the required password for the effective user either at Host or Host Group level or it can be configured as a Global Parameter. For more information on this refer to Running Ansible Playbooks as non-root users from Red Hat Satellite 6.

For more KB articles/solutions related to Red Hat Satellite 6.x Remote Execution Issues, please refer to the Red Hat Satellite Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Red Hat Satellite 6.x Remote Execution Issues

Root Cause

• Under Administer > Settings > Remote Execution tab, SSH User and Effective User were set to non-root user.

• Per Content from docs.ansible.com is not included.Ansible documentation, SSH user (remote_user) and the Effective User (become_user), can't be the same, which would cause the jobs to fail where privilege escalation is a must. Below is the excerpt from Content from docs.ansible.com is not included.Ansible documentation.

become_user
    set to user with desired privileges — the user you become, NOT the user you login as. Does NOT imply become: yes, to allow it to be set at host level.

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