ansible-playbook command fails when target is selinux-enabled, but I don't have root access, so I cannot sudo yum install

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Michael Wright

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Jan 4, 2016, 10:42:32 AM1/4/16
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I'm trying to use ansible to automate some application tasks across servers in a cloud-based network.  I have ssh access to these servers, but I do not have the ability to sudo to root on any of them.  I can use the ansible command to run commands on each target (but I can also already use ssh to do that).  I'm working on a Mac, so I installed vagrant and have a test linux server running "locally."  I can use ansible-playbook commands to copy files to that test server and run commands there.  When I try to reuse my playbook yml file to copy-to-and-run-commands-on any of my remote linux systems, I get this error:

> msg: Aborting, target uses selinux but python bindings (libselinux-python) aren't installed!

From searching for this error, I see that others have encountered this and the recommended fix is to "sudo yum install -y libselinux-python", however I don't have sudo access on those systems.  I'm just trying to copy data to/from and run programs remotely (which I can do manually with scp and ssh, and "automate" with bash).  I was hoping that ansible playbooks would be a better way to organize this automation than just using bash scripts.

My question: is there a way to configure around this?  i.e., edit my ansible.cfg or *.yml files so that ansible-playbook will work without installing libselinux-python on each target node?  Is there a way that I can install libselinux-python for just my user without using yum?

Or is ansible-playbook only intended for users who have root access to target servers?

Note: my target Linux systems are running Centos 6.6. and the selinux command getenforce responds with "Permissive."  I'm using ansible 1.9.4 on Mac OS X 10.10.5.

-Mike
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