Ansible Docker containers dynamic inventory on MacOS - docker

Question

I have started a Docker container using the following command:
docker run tomcat:latest
Then I created a file named docker.yml with the following contents:
plugin: community.docker.docker_containers
docker_host: unix://var/run/docker.sock
Finally I try to obtain a list of the currently running Docker containers using:
ansible-inventory -i docker.yml --list
However instead of a list of running containers, I only get the following result:
[WARNING]: * Failed to parse docker.yml with yaml plugin: Plugin configuration YAML file, not YAML inventory
[WARNING]: * Failed to parse docker.yml with constructed plugin: Incorrect plugin name in file: community.docker.docker_containers
[WARNING]: Unable to parse docker.yml as an inventory source
[WARNING]: No inventory was parsed, only implicit localhost is available
{
"_meta": {
"hostvars": {}
},
"all": {
"children": [
"ungrouped"
]
}
}
Have I misunderstood the Ansible Docker containers dynamic inventory or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

I suspect I had a case of system in disarray and this was the cure:
I retained my current Python installation located at ~/Library/Python/3.9/.
Attempted to uninstall Ansible using pip:
pip uninstall ansible
Manually removed all things Ansible:
sudo rm -r /etc/ansible
sudo rm -r -/.ansible
sudo rm -r /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/ansible*
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/ansible*
Performed a fresh installation of Ansible:
pip install ez_setup
pip install --user ansible
Installed Ansible Docker collection prerequisite:
pip install docker
Installed Ansible Docker collection:
ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker
After the above, the Ansible Docker container dynamic inventory works as expected and without errors.