windmill-labs/windmill · error

Error getting ansible collection versions: {stderr}

Error message

Error getting ansible collection versions: {stderr}

What it means

Windmill's ansible dependency-locking step runs `ansible-galaxy collection list` and requires it to exit successfully. When the process returns a non-zero status, the worker aborts and surfaces the process stderr verbatim so the underlying ansible failure is visible. It is thrown from get_collection_locks while computing dependency locks for an ansible job.

Source

Thrown at backend/windmill-worker/src/ansible_executor.rs:1084

}

pub async fn get_collection_locks(
    job_dir: &str,
) -> anyhow::Result<(HashMap<String, String>, String)> {
    let mut ansible_cmd = Command::new(ANSIBLE_GALAXY_PATH.as_str());

    ansible_cmd
        .current_dir(job_dir)
        .args(["collection", "list", "--format", "json", "-p", "./"]);

    let output = ansible_cmd.output().await?;

    let mut ret = HashMap::new();
    let mut logs = String::new();

    if !output.status.success() {
        let stderr = String::from_utf8(output.stderr)?;
        return Err(anyhow!(
            "Error getting ansible collection versions: {stderr}"
        ));
    }

    let stdout = String::from_utf8(output.stdout)?;

    let val: serde_json::Value = serde_json::from_str(&stdout)?;

    let Some(own_collections) = val.get(format!("{}/ansible_collections", job_dir)) else {
        return Ok((ret, logs));
    };

    let collections = own_collections.as_object().ok_or(anyhow!(
        "Expected an object (map) for the `ansible-galaxy collection list` command output and got {}",
        own_collections
    ))?;

    for (c_name, c) in collections.iter() {

View on GitHub (pinned to e474e8803c)

Solutions

1. Read the stderr embedded in the message and fix the underlying ansible-galaxy failure it reports.
2. Verify ansible/ansible-core is installed in the worker image (`ansible-galaxy --version`) and on PATH.
3. Delete/clean the job's collection directory and re-run the collection install step.
4. Check for a malformed ansible.cfg in the workspace/job directory.
5. Pin a compatible ansible-core version if a recent upgrade changed CLI behavior.

Example fix

// Dockerfile of worker image
// before
RUN pip install ansible-runner
// after
RUN pip install ansible-core ansible-runner && ansible-galaxy --version

// before running the job, on the worker:
ansible-galaxy --version || echo 'ansible-galaxy missing or broken'
ansible-galaxy collection list >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo OK || echo 'collection list fails; fix ansible install'

When it happens

Trigger: Running an ansible script/job whose dependency-lock phase invokes `ansible-galaxy collection list` in the job directory and the command exits non-zero (bad install, broken ansible install, unreadable collections dir, invalid ansible.cfg).

Common situations: ansible/ansible-galaxy not installed or not on PATH in the worker image; a partially-failed `ansible-galaxy collection install` left a corrupt collections directory; an invalid ansible.cfg in the job dir; incompatible ansible-core version whose CLI flags changed.

Related errors

• Error getting git repo commit hash: {stderr}
• Script '${path}' has a deployment error and cannot be run:\n
• failed to execute replace_ephemeral command: {}
• Failed to parse yaml: {}
• Invalid inventory definition

AI-assisted analysis of windmill-labs/windmill@e474e8803c (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e5f99c63eaf7e98d. Report an issue: GitHub.