Description of problem:

According to ansible documentation [1], JSON format should be used to pass non-string values such as Booleans, integers, floats, lists, etc as extra vars. One of our customers tried to use CephAnsibleExtraConfig definition [2] to enable autoscaling for CephFS pools, but failed because ceph_pools definition was treated as ansible.utils.unsafe_proxy.AnsibleUnsafeText.

It looks like this is caused by the way ceph_ansible_extra_vars is generated by TripleO Heat Templates.

Related discussion:
[rhos-tech][ceph-ansible] Need advice about customizing cephfs_pools using THT parameters


[1]
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_variables.html#defining-variables-at-runtime

[2]
CephAnsibleExtraConfig:
  dashboard_protocol: http
  cephfs_data_pool:
    name: "cephfs_data"
    pg_autoscale_mode: true
    target_size_ratio: 0.0
    rule_name: "replicated_rule"
    size: 2
    min_size: 1
  cephfs_metadata_pool:
    name: "cephfs_metadata"
    pg_autoscale_mode: true
    target_size_ratio: 0.0
    rule_name: "replicated_rule"
    size: 2
    min_size: 1
  cephfs_pools:
    - cephfs_data_pool
    - cephfs_metadata_pool

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
RHOSP 16.2


How reproducible:
Define CephAnsibleExtraConfig as in description and run deployment command


Actual results:
Deployment command will fail with the following error:
2023-06-30 15:47:36,580 p=852187 u=root n=ansible | TASK [ceph-mds : create filesystem pools] **************************************
2023-06-30 15:47:36,580 p=852187 u=root n=ansible | Friday 30 June 2023  15:47:36 +0800 (0:00:00.056)       0:08:10.266 *********** 
2023-06-30 15:47:36,604 p=852187 u=root n=ansible | fatal: [HOSTNAME -> {{ groups[mon_group_name][0] }}]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'ansible.utils.unsafe_proxy.AnsibleUnsafeText object' has no attribute 'name'\n\nThe error appears to be in '/usr/share/ceph-ansible/roles/ceph-mds/tasks/create_mds_filesystems.yml': line 25, column 7, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n\n    - name: create filesystem pools\n      ^ here\n"}

Expected results:
ceph_pools variable is parsed as list by ansible


Additional info:
cat /var/lib/mistral/overcloud/ceph-ansible/extra_vars.yml
cephfs_data_pool:
    min_size: 1
    name: cephfs_data
    pg_autoscale_mode: true
    rule_name: replicated_rule
    size: 2
    target_size_ratio: 0.0
cephfs_metadata_pool:
    min_size: 1
    name: cephfs_metadata
    pg_autoscale_mode: true
    rule_name: replicated_rule
    size: 2
    target_size_ratio: 0.0
cephfs_pools:
- cephfs_data_pool
- cephfs_metadata_pool
container_binary: podman
dashboard_protocol: http
fetch_directory: /var/lib/mistral/overcloud/ceph-ansible/fetch_dir
ireallymeanit: 'yes'