Skip to main content

Hello when attempting to run a ansible play via bash script on a remote RHEL 9 node i am getting "ERROR]: Task failed: Finalization of task args for 'ansible.builtin.set_fact' failed: Error while resolving value for 'infoblox_next_ip': The lookup plugin 'nios_next_ip' failed: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'". This play is using the infoblox plugin to lookup ip addresses, it works great if i run on the remote node local CLI however when triggered from rundeck to the RHEL 9 node i get this error. From my testing it appears to be related to the password and special characters but im not 100% sure. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot?

Not working(trigger from rundeck): rundeck -> shell script -> ansible-playbook -> infoblox module
Working(local CLI on RHEL Node): ansible-playbook -> infoblox module

250 - name: Get next available IP address in given subnet with exclusions
251   ansible.builtin.set_fact:
252     infoblox_next_ip: >-
                          ^ column 23
<<< caused by >>>
a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {
    "changed": false,
    "msg": "Task failed: Finalization of task args for 'ansible.builtin.set_fact' failed: Error while resolving value for 'infoblox_next_ip': The lookup plugin 'nios_next_ip' failed: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'"
}

Hi ​@sky320! That “a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'” error usually means the Ansible process launched by Rundeck is running with a different Python/Ansible/collections environment or encoding than your interactive shell.

A few quick checks/fixes that typically resolve this:

  1. Compare environments (Rundeck vs local CLI):
  • ansible --version
  • python3 --version
  • ansible-galaxy collection list | grep -E 'infoblox|community.general'
  • python3 -c "import infoblox_client,sys;print('infoblox-client',getattr(infoblox_client,'version','unknown'));print(sys.executable)"
  1. Use the fully qualified plugin name:
  • Use infoblox.nios_modules.nios_next_ip in your lookup, not the community.general redirect (the redirect doesn’t work on Ansible 2.9).
  • Example: 
    ipaddr: "{{ lookup('infoblox.nios_modules.nios_next_ip', '192.168.10.0/24',  
                       provider={'host': 'nios01', 'username': 'admin', 'password': ib_password}) }}"
  1. Ensure the Infoblox dependency is in the Rundeck Python env:
  • infoblox-client must be installed where Rundeck runs ansible-playbook (controller).
  1. Don’t pass the password via shell args (special chars can get mangled):
  • Put credentials in an Ansible vars file or Vault and reference as variables in the provider dict.
  1. Set encoding in the Rundeck step:
  • LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8, PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8
  1. Check proxy variables:
  • If Rundeck has http_proxy/https_proxy set, try disabling or add Infoblox to no_proxy.

If it still fails, please run with -vvvv and share the traceback so you can see exactly where the TypeError is thrown (plugin vs HTTP layer). Official plugin docs here for reference: infoblox.nios_modules.nios_next_ip and general lookup behavior: Lookup plugins.

Hope this helps, enjoy your day!

Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement