When building an ostree-based (bootc) container image, using ansible-playbook -c local to execute a task with the ansible.builtin.service module fails. The module is unable to correctly detect or manage services within the non-booted container build environment, impacting the usability of many standard roles for image creation.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a simple playbook, baseline.yml, to enable a service:
—

name: Configure baseline
  hosts: all
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: Enable firewalld service
      ansible.builtin.service:
        name: firewalld
        enabled: true
 

2. Create a Containerfile:
FROM registry.redhat.io/rhel9/rhel-bootc:latest

1. Install dependencies for the test
   RUN dnf -y install ansible-core firewalld
2. Add playbook and run it
   ADD baseline.yml /root/baseline.yml
   RUN ansible-playbook -c local /root/baseline.yml

3. Attempt to build the image: podman build -t my-bootc-image .
 

Actual Result: ❌ The playbook fails with a fatal error on the service task:
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Could not find the requested service firewalld: host"}
 

Solution:
Use the systemd module directly: Replacing the service module with ansible.builtin.systemd works correctly in this environment.