ec2 inventory plugin does not work without region or regions field

[Zokormazo]

Summary

According to https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/amazon/aws/aws_ec2_inventory.html ec2 inventory plugin should retrieve nodes from all the regions except the restricted ones (eg gov ones) if you don't specify regions. region key is not documented there.

but starting 6.0 this does not work anymore.

Similar to the old ansible/ansible#45288 a

Issue Type

Bug Report

Component Name

ec2_inventory

Ansible Version

$  ansible --version
ansible [core 2.15.0rc2.post0]

Collection Versions

$ ansible-galaxy collection list

Collection                  Version
--------------------------- -------
amazon.aws                  6.0.0 

AWS SDK versions

$ # pip3 show boto boto3 botocore
WARNING: Package(s) not found: boto
Name: boto3
Version: 1.24.95
Summary: The AWS SDK for Python
Home-page: https://github.com/boto/boto3
Author: Amazon Web Services
Author-email: None
License: Apache License 2.0
Location: /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
Requires: jmespath, botocore, s3transfer
Required-by: 
---
Name: botocore
Version: 1.27.95
Summary: Low-level, data-driven core of boto 3.
Home-page: https://github.com/boto/botocore
Author: Amazon Web Services
Author-email: None
License: Apache License 2.0
Location: /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
Requires: jmespath, python-dateutil, urllib3
Required-by: s3transfer, boto3

Configuration

$ ansible-config dump --only-changed
CONFIG_FILE() = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

OS / Environment

ubi8 based execution environment

Steps to Reproduce

plugin: amazon.aws.aws_ec2
#regions:
#  - us-east-1
# region: us-east-1

Expected Results

Inventories plugin works against all unrestricted regions

Actual Results

Inventory plugin fails because of lack of regions

* Failed to parse /runner/inventory/aws_ec2.yml with auto plugin:
The amazon.aws.aws_ec2 plugin requires a region and none was found in
configuration, environment variables or module parameters

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the Ansible Code of Conduct

[tremble]

@Zokormazo,

Thanks for taking the time to open this issue.

It's actually asking for region not regions. I suspect that it's failing to find a default region to use to connect to the EC2 endpoint and grab a list of regions. Could you try setting region (pick any region) and see if it still queries the right regions for you?

[Zokormazo]

@tremble
Checked, and the ec2 plugin works specifying a region.

But this does not invalidate the behaviour change. With 5.1.0 , going without region or regions works. With 6.0 does not

[tremble]

@Zokormazo,

Thanks, that confirms the issue is where I thought it was and gives us a work around if necessary. Hopefully, #1552 will properly fix the issue.

[Zokormazo]

Thanks for the fast turnaround !