Configure ansible-navigator for a project: a local execution environment image, the pull policy, stdout mode and no artifacts. Then see what a bad pull policy and a run without the execution environment do.

Before you start

This VM is the control node. The lab creates the user greg (password Lab-Pass-1) with an SSH key, and installs ansible-core and ansible-navigator (from PyPI, in /opt/le-lab-navigator). Work as greg, in /home/greg/ansible: its ansible.cfg reads the inventory inventory, logs in as devops and becomes root, and site.yml is a playbook for every node.

greg's podman has one execution environment image, localhost/lab-ee:2.16, built here from public parts, the way the chapter's "Getting navigator and an image" shows: AlmaLinux 10's ansible-core with the ansible.posix and community.general collections from Ansible Galaxy. It exists only on this VM, in no registry, and needs no login. podman images (as greg) lists it.

The managed nodes node1 (10.99.1.11) and node2 (10.99.1.12) are AlmaLinux 10 containers reached over SSH by name; on both, devops accepts greg's key and may use sudo without a password. For a root shell on a node, sudo podman exec -it node1 bash.

Tasks

Write /home/greg/ansible/ansible-navigator.yml so that navigator uses the image localhost/lab-ee:2.16, never pulls, runs in stdout mode and writes no playbook artifacts. ansible-navigator settings --effective --sources shows Settings file for each of them, and ansible-navigator run site.yml prints plain playbook output.
Run site.yml once with the pull policy always (--pp always) and read the error. Write the line navigator stops with to /root/lab-answers/2 (as root).
Run site.yml with the execution environment turned off (--ee false). Which module fails, and why? Write its full name to /root/lab-answers/3 (as root).

Hints

Everything sits under the top-level ansible-navigator: key, and setting names use hyphens: execution-environment (image, pull: policy:), mode, playbook-artifact (enable).
ansible-navigator settings --sample prints a commented example of every setting. A key that shows Defaults in --sources is misspelled or in the wrong place.
--ee false runs the control node's own ansible-core, with only the collections installed here; ansible-galaxy collection list shows them.