[BUG] Agent role has unecessary changes, when the agent is already registered and added to CheckMK about ansible-collection-checkmk.general HOT 2 CLOSED

Moinsen Peter! 🙂

Thanks for reporting this. Let me provide some background.

TASK [checkmk.general.agent : Linux: Download Vanilla CRE agent.] **************
changed: [midevansible.company.lan]

At the time of the download, we do not know whether we actually need the file. As the download goes to /tmp by default, the file will be gone after a reboot. Hence, it gets downloaded after every reboot. If you run the task twice without rebooting, you will see, that the second run yields no change.

TASK [checkmk.general.agent : Linux: Register Agent for TLS.] ******************
changed: [midevansible.company.lan]

This is a ansible.builtin.command task, which makes it non-trivial to make it idempotent. From the top of mind I am uncertain, if we can use the command output or not. This requires further investigation.

TASK [checkmk.general.agent : Fetch fresh monitoring data from host.] **********
changed: [midevansible.company.lan -> localhost]

This task actually triggers a re-scan of the host, which means, the "changed" state is technically right (which is the best kind of being right 😉)

TASK [checkmk.general.agent : Update monitored services and labels on host.] ***
changed: [midevansible.company.lan -> localhost]

This one might be valid as well. Unless something actually changes. But if you are certain this is not okay, it is probably an issue with the discovery module and not with the agent role. I would ask you double-check, if you can reproduce the issue with a dedicated task using the discovery module and if so, open a dedicated issue for the module.

RUNNING HANDLER [checkmk.general.agent : Activate Changes.] ********************
changed: [midevansible.company.lan -> localhost]

Are you sure there are no changes to activate? This one is the same as the last one. If the change detection does not work, it is a problem with the module, and we need a dedicated issue for the activation module.

from ansible-collection-checkmk.general.

Of course I get why the first 3 are showing up as change. But in my opinion it makes way more sense to use changed_when: false here, otherwise my play recap is filled up with irrelevant changes (like downloading to tmp or rescanning).

I do not find any way to mute the changes for a role execution. So I guess I have to live with those changed tasks :(

from ansible-collection-checkmk.general.