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Issue description

If the student provides a bad configuration file for ansible-navigator, the grading script does not fail on this step, but it rather fails on subsequent steps making the source of the error less clear to the student.

A student could choose to use (e.g.) 'ansible-inventory' instead of 'ansible-navigator inventory' to verify their work and oversee the error in the ansible-navigator configuration.

Steps to reproduce:

Provide a bad configuration for ansible-navigator like the following (the ansible key is missing between ansible-navigator and inventory)

---
ansible-navigator:
    inventory:
      entries:
        - inventory.yaml
 ...

Now say that the student must configure the inventory files with variables for all hosts. To meet the lab specifications, the student must eliminate all the variables except for ansible_user and ansible_ssh_private_key_file, that need be defined in inventory.yaml for all the hosts.

Given the bad ansible-navigator configuration file, the grading will fail with the following content for inventory.yaml

---
all:
  vars:
    ansible_user: student
    ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/lab_rsa
  children:
    ...

The error message is as follows

 - The 'inventory.yaml' file in the 'cr1' branch of the 'git@git.lab.example.com:student/compreview' Git repository does not define the 'ansible_user' variable with the 'student' value for all hosts.

This is because the grading script relies on 'ansible-navigator inventory' to gather the inventory output:

# FROM ~/.venv/labs/lib/python3.9/site-packages/do457/ansible/compreview-cr1/grade_removed_variables.yml

- name: Run 'ansible-navigator inventory -i inventory.yaml'
  ansible.builtin.command:
    cmd: ansible-navigator inventory -i inventory.yaml --list
    chdir: "{{ temp_git['path'] }}"
  register: inventory_vars
 

The task fails with the following error, but the play continues from the rescue section of the block.

The variable inventory_vars then gets transformed into inventory_vars_json, but when accessed in the following grading tasks, the content is empty

# FROM ~/.venv/labs/lib/python3.9/site-packages/do457/ansible/compreview-cr1/grade_removed_variables.yml

    - name: Include tasks/grade_removed_variables.yml
      vars:
        var_data: "{{ inventory_vars_json['_meta']['hostvars'] }}"
        var_key: ansible_user
        var_value: student
        var_inventory_file: inventory.yaml
        var_inventory_hosts:
          - arista1.lab.example.com
          - arista2.lab.example.com
          - iosxe1.lab.example.com
          - iosxe2.lab.example.com
          - junos1.lab.example.com
          - junos2.lab.example.com
      ansible.builtin.include_tasks: tasks/grade_removed_variables.yml
      loop: "{{ var_inventory_hosts }}"
      loop_control:
        label: >-
          Checking if the '{{ var_key }}' variable
          has been defined for the '{{ host_item }}' host.
        loop_var: host_item 

So the error as received by the student is the following

Workaround:

Insert a block for ansible-navigator configuration check.

Expected result:

I would expect the grading script to fail on a wrong configuration of ansible-navigator.